Metal Blade Records newest technical death metal band, Abiotic, have released their debut album “Symbiosis” and the result is a wonderful blend of modern deathcore brutality and traditional death metal execution. With a hefty amount of chugging, technical wankery and screaming, “Symbiosis” will give you moshing, headbanging metal heads exactly what you want. Abiotic brings you the ultra heavy, earth shaking tunes we all love. Add the fierce (and odd) vocal style screams to the mix and you have one of the more barbaric deathcore acts of the year. Their technicality and musicianship is respectable as well. Did Abiotic make the best deathcore album of the year? Read more to find out.
I’ll get to the answer of that last question soon. Let’s talk about the music. John Matos and Matt Mendez absolutely bring you filthy, disgustingly great riffs, leads and solos. Bringing the thunder on his bass is Alex Vazquez and his style is both rhythm based and technical badassery. Andres Hurtado behind the kit displays both technical drum patterns and odd techniques while turning on the blast beats at will to add to the sheer brilliance and brutality of the song. I’m glad he isn’t all 100% blast beats, he showcases amazing musicianship alongside his band mates and they all come together to form one hell of a sound. Vocalist Ray Jimenez has two channels, a lower registered growl and a super high pitch Mitch Lucker styled scream/screech. While his low screams are damn good and work well with the music, it’s his high screech I find obnoxious as hell. The sad thing is, he uses this scream a lot….and it sullies the music. It’s almost as if Ray was listening to Rings of Saturn and Suicide Silence and said to himself, “Those two high pitched screams I will master and make into one, using it as my own.” Here is the result right here on “Symbiosis”.
My favorite track is the instrumental. I feel like the vocals take away from the band a lot and this band has a lot to offer. I hope on the next album Ray sticks to his lower growling because it’s genuinely awesome. I feel the lower screams combined with the technical guitar riffs go together perfectly. Another thing that is kinda off about this album is the fact that no certain song sticks out, they are all good but nothing jumps out and says “I’m the song that will get stuck in your head!!!” Each song is good but they all kind of sound the same. Technical death metal tends to have this problem a lot, it’s the tech part that leads into a nice slower rhythm chug that seems to get stuck in my head and so many bands do this it’s not even special anymore.
Abiotic have put out a solid release though, this is no joke nor is it something to take lightly. These 5 guys from Florida are definitely putting another album in the “Florida is home to death metal” pile. Alongside with the other greats, this album does fit in perfectly with that group. “Symbiosis” is a superb album and is a must for you guitar nerds and headbang enthusiasts. Now to answer that question, did Abiotic make the best deathcore album of the year? Yes they did.