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.
As much as I try to keep tabs on a lot of new bands who drop a demo or an EP before moving on to more developed works, some things just fall through the cracks after hearing new groups admittedly. That’s what happened on my end with Vancouver newcomers Blackwater Burial who dropped a two-song EP called Degraded Being in 2018.
I remember liking it at the time and then lost track of them until last week when my good friend Yegor who plays in Archaic Decapitator told me to check out their new album, The Prison of Belief. The album just dropped ten days ago on August 10th and includes both of the killer songs from their 2018 EP.
When I was doing research to find out more about the band in order to write this, I was blown away to find out they’ve only been active since 2018. The Prison of Belief is an ambitious top-notch album and hardly the work of amateurs. It’s easy to see why it's so sick now, all of the members also play in or have previously played in other great Vancouver metal bands like Expain, Protosequence, ex-Exterminatus, and more.
As for what The Prison of Belief is going for musically, it’s a hodgepodge type tech-death sound, but, incredibly well put together in a way that makes it sound unique. You get a fair mix of super shreddy tech-death with prog-death leanings, an incredible melodic side, a lot of nasty headbang friendly grooves, reoccurring brutality at just the right moments, and, my favorite part, a lot of tech/prog-type thrash blended with tech-death influence in a Revocation and Vektor kind of manner.
The band members other projects cover most of the ground that The Prison of Belief does but none of them individually encompass all that this release does sonically. To say I’m impressed is an understatement, The Prison of Belief is easily one of the best things I’ve heard in 2019 in the tech-death world. The album is embedded for you to hear below and you should check this one out. If you like what you’re hearing, you can order the album over on the Putrid Coffin Records Bandcamp Page. You can follow the band over on the Blackwater Burial Facebook Page.
