Greetings tech fiends, it's that time of the week again. Before we dive into today's column, here's the usual weekly reminder that if you're looking to find even more sick bands, you can do so here.
If you're a fan of tech-death, you more than likely already know and love the Soreption. Their unique style of ever oscillating groove-centric technical death metal is instantly recognizable and has proven to be highly influential among newer bands including The Zenith Passage. Like a lot of people, the group's 2nd album, Engineering the Void was the release that turned me on to the band. Seeing them live in 2015 alongside Cattle Decapitation and Cannibal Corpse just further cemented my love for them. Not only did they steal the show that night, but seeing their music live played so precisely was fucking incredible and made me appreciate what they do even more. Now they're back with their fourth album, Jord, and we've got the full early stream of it today ahead of its release this Friday via Unique Leader Records.
To me, it felt like their last album, Monument of the End, while not a bad album by any means, wasn't as memorable or exciting as Engineering the Void. Granted, that was always going to be a hard album to top and the last album saw some line-up shifts occur too. Line-up shifts happened again on Jord, and yet I think this is a step up from Monument of the End, and I'm pretty sure many fans will agree. As to why this seems stronger and more memorable to me, maybe the band just gelled better as a unit when working on Jord? Or maybe the group's new guitarist Ian Waye played a role songwriting-wise beyond his guitar solo contributions? I'm not sure as I don't have the songwriting credits in front of me to suss out who wrote what. If I've read the available information right, Ian recorded the guitars but may not have contributed to the writing of the songs themselves.
There are a few factors I can discuss that definitely elevate the material on Jord, one of which is the litany of face-melting guest guitar solos from members of Archspire, Psycroptic, Inferi, Abiotic, and more. Keyboardist James Carey from fellow Unique Leader act The Dark Alamorté adds another interesting dimension to the music on many of the songs. In line with prior Soreption albums, Jord also benefits from a swift run time, the album's eight songs total up to just 30 minutes and some change.
Soreption vocalist Fredrik Söderberg kindly shared with us that "Jord is the album where we have put a lot of emphasis on the technicality and groove of Soreption. We wanted this to be an essential record to our sound but also bring new takes on our formula to the table. The lyrics have also changed from dystopian to post-apocalyptic. We are extremely proud of this record and we hope that the people listening will like it as much as we do.” I'd say that's a spot-on explanation of what Jord is all about and seeks to achieve. Simultaneously introducing some new ideas to their well-developed sound while further refining it at the same time.
So be sure to check Soreption's Jord through the embedded album playlist below. Every song on the album is a massive-sounding tour de force of heavy as hell mechanical savagery. The album sounds like it was created by Skynet given its surgically precise approach that sounds robotic and militaristic, almost as if it's a weapon in and of itself. Jord forcefully crushes your brain to bits from start to finish and I can't get enough of it. If you like what you're hearing, Jord can be pre-ordered here. You can follow the group over on the Soreption Facebook Page and Instagram Page.
