Review Summary: Dumbing it down to eleven…hitting the stars anyway.
The gates open and the sonic waves of “Primordial Call” come crashing through. Tentacult’s spacious maelstrom of riffs blunder in, downtuned, climbing, building, as if looking for something. Maybe the abyss? The far-off deeper echelons of space and time?
Lacerating Pattern itself is a blunderbuss of gnarled riffs, thick percussive jaunts and steel bending deep growls. Hyperbole? fucking probably. A scant few of us have been to space, let alone heard the creaking and strains of steel ships floating around the void. Is that pressure even real, or is it the assumption of our minds based on one too many sci-fi television shows? Sure, “Primordial Call” is a slow, unabashed and a bit of a letdown for an opening impact and yet, we’re probably a lot more familiar with the “Litany of Relict Caverns” and the type of super-dooper progressive death metal dirges that [just] outlasts the ten-minute mark. That’s the word innit? “Progressive”.
Lacerating Pattern is less progressive than the niche it's lumped into, and yet there’s something here transformative, transcending the slow thrash riffs or the angular fuzz of “Seismic Assault”. Maybe it
is progressive, just under the radar when compared to the balls against the walls acts to which we as music consumers hold our lofty standards but it
exists nonetheless.
Maybe I’m deep diving this just a little too much. After all we’re only here for the riffs and the growls, right? The traditional use of blast beats is generally few and far between. Cymbal crashes accentuate the angular groove and jutting melodies. The ‘ting’ of the ride cuts clearly through the din. “Aberration Sphere” is massive but doesn’t exceed or out welcome the four-minute mark. That’s good!
Lacerating Pattern does show restraint, even while wholesome bombastic rhythms noodle through each stanza. Tentacult saves their ten-minute compositions for
maximum impact...or at least something more substantial,
progressive, or at least towards the beginnings and ends of their newest slab of death metal—well placed doom inspired death dirges for the
holier than caveman crowd. You know who you are.
Perhaps I’ve simply become too invested in how far we can stretch the death metal genre while absent mindedly looking over my shoulder. The past gives us jaded listeners such a foothold on the
music we want to be listening to that we possibly shut down the more modern incursions from the genre’s more flashy, flamboyant purveyors. That aside,
Lacerating Pattern does more than its fair share of isolating the old-school aesthetic and de-revolutionizing it to the nth degree. That’s what makes
Lacerating Pattern such a welcome, familiar listen. There’s no forward-thinking, no innovation. Lighter nuance teases the very idea of progressive music without actually attempting it. Tentacult looks so far back they’ve somehow hit the present. That’s how we got to the “Fractal Gateway”. We just need someone to hold our hand while we go back to go forwards.
