Ontological Mysterium

Horrendous is a band that I remember being praised quite a bit for their debut, The Chills, back in 2012. I remember buying that album and not being nearly as impressed as some people were. I've checked out the other albums over the years, with the same lukewarm feeling. That's also true of this new album; it's not bad, it just doesn't do much for me.

For the uninitiated, it doesn't take long to realize that the band plays progressive death metal as things get a little wacky pretty quickly. Definitely not the pedal-to-the-metal variety of death metal, instead it's time-signature-change haven—to some extent anyway. I find that more distracting than anything and some songs sound kind of disjointed as a result. The vocals are a mix of growls, rasps as well as some clean vocals that are way too clean for death metal and really sound out of place. Unsurprisingly, they throw in passages that are anything but death metal, reminding me of the way Opeth did things 20+ years ago (probably still today; I haven't been paying attention). There's a public for this, but the average death metal listener may want to sample a few songs first. No doubt that these guys are talented, and I have to give them props for distinguishing themselves by doing something different instead of just rehashing the past, but I found this a little too disjointed of an album for my taste.