Hey there tech fiends, it's that time of the week again. Before we dive into today's focus, here's the usual reminder that if you're looking for more sick music, all prior editions of this series can be perused here.
Blasteroid is a fairly new group from Athens, Greece who very recently released their debut EP, Universal Knowledge. Prior to coming out on November 23rd, one of the band's members contacted me and shared an early single that hooked me in and had me highly anticipating the full release. After a ton of spins, I'm still loving Universal Knowledge and will keep coming back to it.
This is an interesting release due to it's outside of the tech-death norm prominent influence from technical/progressive thrash in a way that reminds me of Vektor, Revocation, and underground legends Coroner quite a bit as well. Their main tech-death framework that their galloping thrashy side blends into reminds me of a mix between Irreversible Mechanism and Decrepit Birth with a bit of ethereal and beautiful progressive death metal influence also flowing in its veins. The groups put a ton of ideas in each song and there's usually some big thrashy hooks to latch onto for most of the release that ends up working well and gets my head banging every time. Which is a bit surprising since most thrash inflected tech-death does very little for me, but Universal Knowledge succeeds where others bore me by fusing the two very different styles of thrash and tech-death together in an inspired and infectious way.
Though Blasteroid is new and finding their sound, Universal Knowledge is clearly the work of many very talented musicians that have a killer batch of material here that's brimming with bright ideas and phenomenal performances from everyone involved. This is a fun release with a lot of variety to it that keeps me fully invested throughout the five-song experience. I'm certain that they'll only improve in time, so keep an eye on Blasteroid moving forwards. Be sure to follow the group over on the Blasteroid Facebook page too.
