Hailing from Massachusetts, The Summoned play a form of noisy, techy/grindy spazzy tech/death metal that recalls a lot of the Black Market Activities/ Ironclad Recordings bands of the early and mid 00s. Much like the recent release from super group Johm Frum, there’s a lot of Dillenger-y, The Red Chord, Animosity, early Between the Buried and Me, Gaza, Ed Gein and such, but you can hear some modern Decapitated in the band’s choppy death metal back flourishes.

The higher register vocals of Shaun Murphy (with a few deeper growls and a couple of clean croons) and lots of stop start/ choppy stuttering time changes keep things out of pure tech death metal realms, and rooted in the 00s ‘pseudo grind’ scene, but overall this is certainly a tech metal record with a few death metal elements that I wanted to like much more than I ended up.

The scatter shot style and constant twiddling, twanging riffs keep the material from getting locked into any sort of groove or style I can sink my teeth into, though is certainly musically impressive. The likes of “Faradic”, “The Grave Mistake”, “Built of Glass” or more tech death “Primogenial Birth” have some moments here and there that make me think these guys have a lot of promise and skill but I’m just not sure which fan base they will appeal too..That said,  if they dropped the vocals, I could definitely see the instrumental metal crowd getting into them.

The production is top notch  and there is even a few orchestral/keyboard moments littered around (“Vertiginous”, “Primogenial Birth”) , and some acoustic ambiance (closer “Satori”) but it only adds to the kaleidoscope of chaos and styles that make for even more of of a mish mash in what is otherwise a promising musical endeavor.

[Visit the band's website]

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