Review Summary: A modern technical death metal masterpiece.
When I stumbled upon this album by the assistance of a reddit post, I thought to myself that this will be just another boring, average, overly "trying to be the most technical" album. The name, Dream Void... And the album cover, just seemed like a common tech-death cliche. But that was until I gave this a listen. I got absolutely mind blown by the great musicianship and quite originality in this piece of craft.
My mind was also blown by the fact that this had just a single vote on Sputnik when I looked it up, when it's already 4 years old
Death metal is really going through a golden age right now thanks to bands like these. Or a silver age maybe. Dream Void didn't miss anything they should on this EP. It fulfills everything I want from a tech-death album. It contains fast-paced, crushing riffs that won't leave sitting on your sofa doing nothing like a malfunctioning dil*o, but will leave you vibrating in joy like if you were on max setting. Heavy chugs that will make you head bang all over the place are on this record too, to add more diversity. Weedly-doo wank playing in the background while you're shaking your brain off will spice things up, atmospheric and slower passages that add further life to the albums aren't missing too, so you get time to prepare for all the blasts and guitar riffs that will make you cream in between songs.
Brutal vocals are growled and shrieked in addition to all this to make your dopamine and adrenaline rush even higher. Production is clean, so you can hear every part of this clearly, but also isn't totally overproduced like other bands tend to do to make it unlistenable.
Nothing much to reproach about this album, other than the fact that this is an EP with only 21 minutes. You can't just make one of the best tech-death records and with the length of 21 minutes. At least 2 more tracks would be very neat to make this experience longer. Also, of course that this isn't anything absolutely genre-breaking. It's "just" a really well-made technical death metal album.
And that's Divinization. Dream Void proved with Divinization that there still is very good metal nowadays, and that metal isn't dead. They did show to be true that technical death metal isn't just a competition between who can ride their instrument the hardest. I mean, play the fastest.
Definitely an album you should listen too if you love all the tech in death metal.
