Review Summary: Wild and simultaneously focused, Feeding the Abscess sees Martyr at the top of their game, with their core elements on display best with none of the fluff.
Dan Mongrain has always known his way round a riff, but with Martyr's
Warp Zone and
Feeding the Abscess he found his niche style, which has carried into his work in
Voivod. Frenzied, unpredictable runs of dissonant harmonies and subtly groovy rhythms characterise his playing, and with Feeding the Abscess, all the machinery is fine-tuned for one of the most wild but precise tech-death albums out there.
Compared to other prominent tech death bands, Martyr has fairly distinct themes throughout their tracks, which enables the spidery riffing and detours to remain grounded and coherent. In a way, the style is closest to
Psycroptic, but with jazzier leanings and a more natural groove. Despite some relentless drum work and some flashy bass, no one part ever really feels like it's overwhelming the rest, with the guitars assuming a natural spotlight without diminishing the overall product.
As openers go,
Perpetual Healing (Infinite Pain) is about as good as it gets for tech death. Apocalyptic in tone, brash, but with catchy grooves and floaty, eerie soloing, it sets out the breadth of the album's sound without spreading itself too thin. Best of all is its closing section, developing on the opening riffs with some wild dissonant harmonies and some good old Dirk-blasts before returning to its exact opening point, grounding everything very effectively in its core theme.
Lost in Sanity exhibits the band's ability to stick to groovier, simpler patterns when appropriate, with plenty of memorable atmospheric riffs, whilst
Nameless, Faceless, Neverborn amps up the speed with its rapid hammer-ons and excellent solos. Almost as good as the opener is
Felony, which manages to match it for variety with its mixture of atmospheric riffing and dissonant fills. The final closing 4 tracks,
Dead Horizon, manage to fit together in much the same way as Felony, but builds up slower and more methodically, with the final part, Shellshocked, delivering a ferocious close to the album. The pacing is pretty immaculate, and the common traits of the tracks are spread out such that none of it blends together. Everything has a unique character, something which is rarely able to be said for tech-death.
The weakness of the album is actually pretty simple -
Feast of Vermin lacks the same finesse of the rest of the album, with some clunky transitions and some weak grooves that don't flow as well as in the opener, Felony or
Silent Science. Compared to the surrounding Lost in Sanity and the rabid
Havoc, it lacks both the hooks and the impressive technical flair. Thankfully, few of the tracks on this album are very long, and those which breach the 4 minute mark are all excellent.
Martyr is an excellent choice for those who find most tech-death trite, as, especially on this album, they remedy so many of the typical problems with the genre without sacrificing its core appeal of fast, flashy riffs and unusual harmonic choices. If you wished
Quo Vadis had some grit,
Spawn of Possession could play the same theme for more than 30 seconds, and
Origin could do interesting progressions, look no further.
