Florida’s Abiotic are a deathcore band leaning more on the technical side of things, and have managed to create quite a buzz with only an EP under their belt before this outing, their first full length album. The hype got them snatched up by Metal Blade, and their style is a touch Veil of Maya, Born of Osiris and earlier The Faceless.

Following a short intro, right away you can tell this band has the heavy part down.  It’s almost an I Declare War style heft.  But then along comes the one thing that can ruin a good album for me every time: the vocals.  Ray Jimenez has an impressive death growl, but this way over-processed, almost digital sounding raspy style he uses is almost as awful as Chelsea Grin (though I’m not sure anything can approach that aural atrocity).  I won’t belabor that aspect, but I bring it up to point out that if you can get past that, there’s some good stuff going on here.

“A Universal Plague” and “Hegira” show off some impressive guitar jousting between guitarists Johnathan Matos and Matt Mendez, with “Hegira” ending on a tasty groove riff.  Both tracks are over six minutes long, and help the band flesh out some ideas instead of just tossing in a few breakdowns and open chords.  “The Singe” sees some djent leanings creep in, and adds further variety to what’s on display.  Andres Hurtado keeps things locked down behind the kit, but his drums definitely sound programmed and almost too clean for my tastes.

And of course you have some of the good ol’ breakdowns, but they are far from the only thing these guys have in their arsenal.  I deleted this album after reviewing as the vocals killed it for me, but all in all this is an impressive rookie effort, and even objective deathcore haters (is that an oxymoron?) might find something to grab onto here.

[Visit the band's website]

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