Hey there fellow tech-fiends who frequent this column! It's time once again for another edition of Tech-Death Tuesday, and today's picks are possibly the darkest and most disgusting groups I've featured thus far. If your just joining us for the first time, this is a new weekly feature here at Metal-Injection focused on showcasing new, upcoming, and lesser known technical death metal bands with fans of the genre. Previous installments of this series can be found here. Since a fellow writer here informed me that posts for the year end next Monday, that makes this the final 2015 installment of Tech-Death Tuesday. Which makes me a little sad, since I've had fun doing this. So please remember to check back on Tuesday, January 5th for the first 2016 installment of this series!
The Abstract-The Abstract
In the last couple years it seems that the brutal death metal oriented spectrum of tech-death has really diversified and brought forth bands looking to bring something fresh to the sound like the latest Defilementory, Disentomb, and Repulsive Dissection (who I featured here recently) to name a few. For a sound that has seemed stale for awhile, this is a welcome development to my ears. With that being said, I'd like to introduce you to the Mexico based group The Abstract. Like the aforementioned groups, The Abstract have a lot going on beyond the typical brutal technical type sound. The music is structured very unconventionally for one, and also takes some influence from modern dissonant black metal and groups such as Ulcerate and Origin. If anything, The Abstract consists of highly experimental music, yet shows a group already more than capable of defining and owning a sound all their own. In just three songs totaling just over 20 minutes, The Abstract have become one of my favorite new groups who I expect to hear even greater music from in the future. Technical death metal needs more adventurous groups like The Abstract who seem set on breaking the mold of how bands of this ilk tend to sound.
Khariot-Esoteric
I've been following Australian technical death metal act Khariot for some time now and consider their latest record, Esoteric, to be among the finest and most interesting technical death metal releases I heard all year. Khariot specialize in the darker and grimier spectrum of technical death metal, drawing strength and inspiration from Gorguts and Ulcerate in a big way. So this definitely isn't your typical flashy and frenetic tech-death, it's more like a sea of tar and torture whose idea of punishment is closer to suffocating you slowly than anything else. While more and more groups are drawing inspiration from Gorguts and Ulcerate, it takes a very skilled group like Khariot to take influence from them and then make it their own like they do on Esoteric. To me it's additionally impressive that the line-up for this record consists of only two people. Showing yet again that a few creative minds set on doing something different can often trump a full line-up dead set on doing what everyone else is.
