On its third album, Hybreed Chaos achieves an ambitious metamorphosis. The band maintains its old school yet avant-garde death metal roots despite a drastic change of personnel. In this instrumental form “with cello,” the Montreal trio proves to be more relevant and promising than ever.
As always, the music is largely built around the rhythmic ideas of drummer and founding member Frank Camus. He combines driving grooves with all manner of rhythmic permutations, such as polyrhythms and irregular metrics. The result is an oddly interesting but limited signature. Indeed, the most interesting bifurcations of the drums often tend to fall back on comfortable rhythms. When the music speeds up, it doesn’t last very long either. But these characteristics aren’t necessarily bad, since they allow an atmosphere of heaviness to take hold instead of the sense of urgency often incurred in modern death metal.
What’s surprising is how well the music works, even when stripped of vocal arrangements. The timbre of the electric cello perfectly conveys the heaviness necessary for this type of music, giving the melodic component of the pieces a new colour. The melodies, it should be stressed, are more anguished chromaticism than lyricism. The trio formula also leaves plenty of room for the bass to rumble and underline the rhythm, as well as complementing the cello’s phrasing. Quite short, Subliminal Abyssal Carnage nevertheless keeps things interesting, with a freely improvised intro, a surprise solo by Daniel Mongrain (Martyr, Voïvod) and a brutal, chaotic finale.
Nevertheless, this is a band in transition, and it shows. Subliminal Abyssal Carnage is an album that might well never have seen the light of day, and that’s probably what gives it a slightly muddled feel. The production is excellent, but the arrangements could certainly have been more ambitious, notably by avoiding certain repetitions and taking on more of the progressive side of the pieces. The visuals also leave something to be desired. The beautiful abstract cover is hampered by amateurish computer graphics and fonts. We hope that in the long term Subliminal Abyssal Carnage will be the necessary cornerstone for a unique reincarnation that will continue to refine itself. Something to look out for!
