The vocalist is one of the better ones that I’ve heard in a
while. He does all very high-quality inhales that have a very strong sound. Oh
yeah, I should also mention that the former Fleshbomb vocalist and the vocalist
and the drummer from Gorgasm all do guest vocals on the album. The thing is, I
have no fucking idea where they are and what tracks they do vocals on. I have a
feeling that the Gorgasm vocalist does guest vocals on the eighth track since
there’s a couple of random brutal death-style breakdowns with extremely deep
inhaled growls. But there’s no telling for sure. I’m not even the biggest fan
of Gorgasm OR Fleshbomb (I don’t hate either, though), but this might be a cool
thing for those of you that ARE fans of them. I will admit that the added
element of the inhaled vocals does a great job of giving the music a great
twist and a different sounds perfect for the situation.
Most of the TRULY underground technical death that I’ve
heard over the past year or so has been mainly mediocre. The majority of the
bands have either put too much focus on brutality, extreme and overwhelming
technicality, speed, or a combination of two or more of those elements. For me,
as long as there’s at least SOMETHING behind that extra stuff, it’s not
horrible. For example, some of the most technical bands in existence: Rings of
Saturn, Slaughterbox, and Origin have seemingly inhuman instrumental skills and
speed capabilities. But they all have at least obvious signs of some kind of
musical structure behind their overwhelming guitar shredding. An example of an
album that puts 100% of the focus on technicality and brutality would be Brain
Drill’s Quantum Catastrophe. This album has no signs of musical structure or
attempted atmosphere whatsoever. Back Door to Asylum is an example of what I
look for when I sift through enormous lists of the technical death genre’s
newest underground bands.
Is the instrumental complexity at an Origin-comparable
level? Not even close. The technicality most definitely shines through, but not
through all of the instruments like in other bands. The guitars aren’t any more
technical than Deicide, which isn’t something that hasn’t been done before in
technical death. The vocals don’t follow a really weird pattern like Fleshgod
Apocalypse, The Faceless, and Rings of Saturn; the vocal patterns remain fairly
predictable for the duration of the album. Even the overall structure of the
music isn’t overly complex and thick! That is…except for the bass and drums.
Since the bassist is
the biggest attraction that this band holds, I’ll talk about the drummer first.
The drummer plays these REALLY tight explosive blast beats that remind me of
Fleshgod Apocalypse…except not quite as fast and technical. The snare sounds
like it’s had SOME of the buzz taken off, but not all (I don’t know how that
would be done). But it has the really tinny sound that a snare has when you
take the buzz off, but you can still hear the buzz (I can’t think of a better
way to explain that). Anyway, because of that, the snare is naturally louder
than normal and therefore makes the downbeats of the blast beats bolder and
much more profound. Since these guys have an extremely skilled drummer, it
sounds AMAZING. I could use for the kick drums to have some more body to their
sound on the lower end. But they don’t sound super weak and “clicky”.
The bassist is hands-down, the man of the hour here. Not
only does the technicality of what he plays the same as that of the drummer,
but he’s also the most musically creative and expressive member of the band. On
top of SEVERAL mind-blowing bass solos and blasting fills, there’s even an
entire track on the album that’s a fucking bass solo. The interlude track
titled Detachment contains nothing but the bass guitarist and some random
background noises. The overall sound of the track itself is very experimental
and atmospheric, not heavy, complex, or even fast at all. It’s sort of like a
really ambient guitar solo…except it’s a bass. This display of musical and creative
diversity raises this band’s credibility by a whole fucking bunch. I initially
almost skipped over this track since it started out with…well…not much. But
after I listened to the whole thing, it was one of those “I wasn’t expecting
that at ALL” kind of moments where you need an extra couple of seconds to
comprehend what you just heard.
Russia’s Back Door to Asylum brings you some of the most
crushing technical brutality that’s been released since Spawn of Possession’s
Incurso. The album could most definitely do without the unnecessary intro and
outro tracks (the album needs to be longer to have those). This isn’t an easy
album to find, but if you do (surefire way to find it is on Amputated Vein’s
website), don’t turn down the opportunity because this is a one-of-a-kind slab
of metal. I would give Akathisia 15/20.
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