Confession time: One band I’ve heard of forever but have never bothered to check out is Chthe’ilist. I’m not exactly sure why. The nearly impossible to pronounce band’s name has been on the lips of every vintage Bolt Thrower longsleeve clad, MDF attending, Decibel reading metalhead for the better part of a decade now (totally not stereotyping). So what better way to introduce myself to this band than by continuing to avoid their catalog completely and instead checking out their tech death/thrash side project, Dissimulator?
Consisting of guitarist/vocalist Claude Leduc, bassist Antoine Daigneault, and drummer Philippe Boucher, Dissimulator is indeed 3/4 of Chthe’ilist. The power trio (technically speaking) formed as an offshoot in 2021 with the intention of achieving musical feats that would otherwise be impossible within the scope of their main band, or so I assume. Again, I’ve never listened to Chthe’ilist in my life, but if they’re even half as good as the metallic insanity that is Dissimulator’s debut, Lower Form Resistance, I’ve been missing out big time.
Just when I thought the sci-fi themed stylings of Sovereign’s Altered Realities would be the most unhinged album to cross my radar this week, here comes Lower Form Resistance sounding like Voivod at their most spasmodic gone early ’90s death metal. At least that’s the only description I can think up of when listening to cuts like “Neural Hack” and “Automoil & Robotoil”, the latter of which is an absolute rollercoaster of a song. Just when you conjure up the mental stamina to process one passage, another begins with equal intensity and cathartic rage. It’s tech death at its ugliest and apocalyptic, testing the limits of the listener’s cranial capacity.
One can’t help but hear tinges of death metal monoliths Altars of Madness and Beneath the Remains on cuts like “Warped” and “Hyperline Underflow” respectively, the latter a downright violent death/thrasher that had me nearly slamming into the walls of my office. However, the conventionality ends there. By and large, Lower Form Resistance is an aural barrage of grinding blasts, lethal death metal riffage, and esoteric weirdness reminiscent of Cynic (i.e. vocoders, progressive flourishes, so forth). The tech death/thrash clinic that is the 6 and a half minute title track rounds the album out, really showing off each member’s individual playing abilities, yet without coming off as overly flashy.
Normally, a purist such as myself would dismiss an album of this nature as hipster metal noise, tailormade for the exact demographic I described in the first paragraph of this review. And yet I find myself perplexed by the sheer demented genius that is Lower Form Resistance. As far as I’m concerned, it’s more fulfilling than any Voivod album since Killing Technology (1987), Cynic’s Focus (1993) (while I respect the influence, I never grasped the hype), and a good portion of today’s death metal crop. Go ahead and call that blasphemy. I call Lower Form Resistance a tech death/thrash triumph to be feared and revered for years to come. Forget 2024. Welcome to 3024.
8 out of 10
Label: 20 Buck Spin
Genre: Technical Death/Thrash Metal
For fans of: Voivod, Cynic, Sovereign