This must be the best 4-way-split-Ep of the year! Not only for a niche genre like Tech-Death but in general!
Once again a great release by Swedish death powerhouse Blood Harvest. They accumulate four awesome death metal bands – each with a distinctively own style – on this four-way split. Chasm of Aeons first of all really impresses with its stylish high-class artwork, that reminds one of The Sword’s Warp Riders and the Blood Incantation space-themed covers. Then the assembly of bands: Cryptic Shift, who showed all their might and strength on their Blood Harvest-debut earlier this year, New Brunswick’s very own Replicant and Cleveland’s pride Inoculation flex their muscles and Astral Tomb from Denver (see first review above) finish this 19-minute massacre. Cryptic Shift do not disappoint with their track “Cosmic Dreams” and neither do Replicant or Inoculation, but the highlight is definitely Astral Tomb’s “Transcendence from the Mortal Plane (Guided by Familiar Phantasm)” (that title!!!!) because of its rowdy, feisty, biting and scratching noise intro, by a drum kit that intentionally is completely out of tune and trash to the max – if Slipknot ever made real tech death metal, this is what it would sound like. There is even a moment of tribal drumming in these five minutes. Accompanied by an awesome solo and a lot of noisy guitars, there is no better ending for an awesome split than this one. There is no I in team, there is also no I on this split. All blends perfectly together from Cryptic Shift’s ‘near-classic-rock’-track (the solo!!!) to Astral Tomb’s cat in heat-noise-tech-death!
