Sacramento’s Alterbeast are bringing in the New Year with their 2^nd full length release Feast. I really have to hand it to Unique Leader they waste absolutely zero time transitioning from year to year and continue to find outstanding groups with outstanding musicianship. With that being said opening up an album with a piano instrumental is nothing that has not been done before.  This the case with how Feast starts off with the intro to killer opening track “Welcome to Your Doom”.   I take it these guys are huge fans of the Sega video game “Altered Beast”.   Metal guys into video games, that is nothing new.

Zach Ohren of (Immolation, Fallujah and Carnifex) handles the engineering and mixing and all of the instrumentation is top notch throughout. As for the music, the first band that pops to mind is Black Dahlia Murder.  Especially on the aforementioned opening track.   Guitarist’s Andrew Lamb’s fretboard work is all of the place on this thirty eight minute pit inducer and vocalist Michael Alvarez really does an excellent job mimicking Trevor Strnad’s cadence.  Riff wise, there is a bit of Black Dahlia Murder, a bit of Necrophagist and even a bit of black metal influence.  Some might find Feast a bit cookie cutter for this particular style.  These guys are not doing anything that has not been done before in this modern techy, shreddy death metal genre, but I can clearly tell these guys are passionate about metal and write some pretty catchy material.  I feel about this album the way I felt when I heard Nashville Tennessee’s Inferi’s The Path of Apothesis a few years back.

Being only their second full length it is noticeable the growth from their debut album Immortal to this one.  The drumming done by Alex Bent of Trivium is quite clear and concisely relentless and rather surprising coming from that particular group.  Tracks I would recommend would be the opening track, “Feast”, and “Apex Night Eclipse”.  These particular tracks really pop.  If that wasn’t enough these guys do a quite well done cover of Dissection’s “Where Dead Angel’s Lie” from their 1995 classic Storm of Light’s Bane.  This particular cover is not unexpected and you can definitely hear the melodic influence of dissection and other black metal groups throughout. This is definitely not your cookie cutter tech death band and this is definitely not a run of the mill melodic metal band.  I do not think I can find a weak song on this record.

If you are into this style this should be right up your alley.  I look forward to continue to watch these guys grow and look forward to future albums from them. I also look forward to future releases from Unique Leader in 2018.  They seem to find a great deal of talent every year.  Alterbeast are no exception.  Recommended.

[Visit the band's website]

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