Welcome back to Bandcamp Buried Treasure! Generally when I find a band to feature here they only have one or two albums, so choosing the one I want you to hear is easy. Not this week! Neurotech has five releases and they're all really different and great in their own unique way. So if you're not digging the one I picked, go jam the others! Anyway, you know the rules of the article by now:
- I hunt down awesome artists on Bandcamp that have their album up for Buy It Now/Free Download and give them a write up. I'm not explicitly telling you to download the album for free since I'm a big supporter of buying your music, but I like the option for my readership to be there.
- The goal is to introduce you to smaller bands or obscure side-projects you might not have heard of. Anything to expand your musical horizons by just a little bit each week!
- And of course, for there to be a conversation about similar bands or bands you think I should be covering. I check the comments section!
Like I've been saying, I switched the format up a bit with two new sections, titled "The Basic Idea" and "Why I Love It." The former is a short news-style lead that paints a vivid picture of what you're about to hear to get you interested and help you understand a little why I chose the record, while the latter serves simply as a review piece.
Neurotech time!
The Basic Idea
Industrial and cyber-based metal genres rely on such a limited scope of sounds that making something new with them can be extremely difficult. So Neurotech took those machine-like noises, added in some orchestras, an emotionally available human voice and some more natural instrumentation in the realm of metal. Talk about creative!
Why I Love It
The Decipher Volumes is an excellent place to start with Neurotech– there's a lot going on here between the three volumes you can choose from. They're all crammed onto one disc and honestly, I'd suggest you just make a run through all the 20 tracks the compilation has to offer. The thing that gets me about this particular release is that from song to song, there's something that sticks with me. Be it a particular keyboard sound, an upbeat verse, a guitar riff that's particularly crunchy or even a chorus that I'm walking around singing like a pop song for the rest of the day, there's absolutely without a doubt something in each song that is going to latch on to some part of your brain and stay there. Considering these were initially written and released as three separate releases over the course of two years (if I remember correctly), that's a lot of good material to have consistently stuck with.
Not keeping tradition here, let's talk at least briefly about the man's other releases. Yeah, it's all done by one dude named Wulf and he is amazing.
- 2008's Transhuman and 2011's Antagonist remind me a little of Sybreed and melodic death metal bands like Disarmonia Mundi and vaguely Insomnium at points. Worth checking out at the very least- nothing too insane but still worth the listen.
- 2011's Blue Screen Planet is just two really long tracks that sound like if the inside of Skynet from Terminator had a soundtrack. Clean and pristine with a sinister backing.
- 2013's The Decipher Volumes. See above.
- 2013's The Elysian Symphony is like Blue Screen Planet but shorter and more concentrated on melodies and riffs than atmospheres, like Blue Screen Planet was.
So many jams, so little time! Go forth!
