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Soreption: Engineering the void

02/04/14 || The Duff

Technical death metal does Sweden’s Soreption as much an injustice as it does I think Decapitated – comparisons between the two bands are inescapable, and while the guitars are wizardry, neither of them forsake groove, a cornerstone to essentially every single riff.

Soreption caused waves as far back as their very first four-track E.P. “Illuminating the Excessive”, and with the follow-up full-length cemented their sound and released a classic record all at the same time. Anyone wanting a band that adopted Vogg’s (Decapitated) style of riffing and made it its own need not have ventured further than the chops as featured by guitarist Svedin.

The new record has (with a recent signing to Unique Leader Records perhaps explaining the delay) taken four years to reach us – in hearing taster tracks, specifically “Breaking the Great Narcissist”, excitement grew as it sounded like the stop-start djent-mixed-with-death as expertly wrought on “Organic Hallucinosis” that sadly appeared to fizzle out with the tragedy that befell the Polish legends – Soreption appeared to be picking combining such with their brew of aggro-melodic-death and tech-chug tremolo and then of course the mind-blowing guitar leads and the synth as flirted with the final track off their sophomore record.

The album opener is to say the least the band coming kicking in full force, as the number of ideas presented are many as they are a bit of a jumble, and such becomes the general feel for “Engineering the Void”. The tracks almost appear to be in the wrong order such is the disparity of ideas floating around as well as each track’s consistency, the Dimmu Borgir-esque keys among other things hinting at an over-ambitiousness.

There are riffs too that seem an afterthought – “Utopia”, which is absolutely stomping other than for the closing riff which cycles too often and seems merely tagged to the end. Generally, the band has refined its ability to write riffs, but lost its knack for assorting them, and in the past its showy excess somehow managed to surpass the ‘grey’ territory of its music which bears little distinction from track to track.

Suffice to say that the musicianship is stellar, the leads sound genuinely fresh and heartfelt where shred can often be a burden; the drumming too is phenomenal, but this is predominantly a guitarist’s record, the songs co-written by the pair of Svedin and Westermark means the latter oddly never takes charge of the record’s flow. The vocals remind me of Farmakon (or a polished Mikael Akerfeldt), and two records into Soreption’s career these seem to have been a wise choice to suit the gloss of the music.

Guest vocals from Strnad of The Black Dahlia Murder fame, some rather flush artwork, and a production which sounds fuzzier than this album’s predecessor yet bass-heavy and still pretty damn sharp and crunchy, this is not the flawed classic that “Deterioration of Minds” was. It is over-elaborate, clumsily so, but doubtless as they’ve stated the material itself is the best they’ve written – I think this warrants a comfortable score, repeated listens, still one of the best tech death records you can find but the band has gone from promising to perhaps burning out too fast.

Information
Released: 2014
Label: Unique Leader Records
Website: Soreption Facebook
Band
Rikard Persson: bass
Tony Westermark: drums
Anton Svedin: guitars
Fredrik Söderberg: vocals

Tracklist
01. Reveal the Unseen
02. The Nature of Blight
03. Breaking the Great Narcissist
04. A Speech to Survival
05. Utopia
06. Monumental Burden
07. I Am You
08. Engineering the Void

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