Hey there, tech fiends. It's that time of the week again. Before we dive into today's focus, here's the usual weekly reminder that if you're looking for even more sick bands to hear, all prior editions of this series can be perused here.
For all its pitfalls, I know many people into niche metal, and the same for other things, quite enjoy the wider and very accessible range of ways available now to find new music. Whether it’s signed or not. I heard about today’s band from my friend Cody who helps post on an extreme metal page on Facebook that is excellent.
The over the top indecipherable logo and bizarre freaky cover art for this release from Shinda Saibo No Katamari only hint at how strange and fucked up this band’s music is. Instead of a gore-soaked cover common for most technical brutal death metal, we get a strange collection of seemingly vicious and bewildered aquatic animals bowling. This is actually fitting in relation to the music because this a fucking out there and strange release that could be compared to being swarmed by unknown creatures underwater involved in abnormal human actions like bowling? Likely while drowning at the same time but the sensory overload of it all is a glorious thing up until the point where it crushes you to death.
What I’m trying to say is, pummeling is definitely standard for technical brutal death metal, but, left turn spastic and chaotic addled twists focused forms of the style come across far freakier and unique when done right. I'm not alone in preferring bizarre twists on the sound over most straightforward technical brutal death metal that tends to beat you to a pulp in a straightforward manner that often loses its luster before the release is over. This Tokyo based band has only been around since 2016, yet, they’ve churned out a lot of material in that time as I found out on Metal-Archives. Prior to this release, Shinda Saibo No Katamari had already dropped 2 EP’s, a demo, and a single which is pretty wild for only being active for 3 years.
That’s worth mentioning because the album I’m discussing today strikes a strangely sophisticated balance between calculated and off-the-wall batshit crazy chaos so well that it can only come from a place of really refining and working towards greatness over many releases. One of my favorite things about this release is the way the group mixes strains of chaotic and inventively brutal forms of tech-death in unpredictable ways that is pretty damn hard to pin down or foresee what will happen next in any given song. Somehow, in spite of the writing never being straightforward, this really is well written enough to flow with a sense of excitement and purpose where the spastic nature of it adds to the experience as opposed to feeling jarring in a bad or boring way.
Think Blasphemy Made Flesh and None So Vile-era Cryptopsy basically, with some clear modern tech-death influences from Origin, Wormed, and Defeated Sanity and you’re on the right track. As I spotted on the Bandcamp page for this release, the group describes themselves as…"3 young blasters comes from Japan. Brutal Death based technical riffing with complex song structure but keeping super brutality.” Pretty accurate. Desecravity would also be a solid point of comparison for groups who toe an unorthodox line between complex and brutal in a tech-death setting.
Saibogu came out of nowhere for me and continues to blow me away and get me amped dozens of spins later already. I would suggest you give it a shot. So check out the full album below and see how you feel about it. If you’re into it, orders can be placed through the Obliteration Records Site and through the Shinda Saibo No Katamari Bandcamp Page. You can follow the group over on the bands Facebook Page.
