Technically Genius, or overdone?

[Black Iron Priest]

So I am a big Technical Death Metal fan. An interesting song in my opinion is Quantum Catastrophe by Brain Drill. I have seen mixed reviews about it. Some people love it and the amount of technicality in one piece, while others say it's "wank" and tries to hard. What are your opinions?

watch?v=_woAipZPtg4

[FatherAlabaster]

I can appreciate the ambition here, and I actually like some of the dissonance - reminds me of Psyopus - but overall, it does nothing for me. I've always felt that there was an odd contradiction at work in music like this; fake chaos might be the best way to describe it. There are plenty of non sequiturs, but they repeat in a structured way and they're not very evocative. Neither are the melodies. Despite all the apparent "randomness" here, none of it's really surprising. They just keep coming back to the same few places. If this was meant to be an emotional, subjective journey, it would have failed, but I think it's meant to be listened to cerebrally, and on that level I don't find it very rewarding either. Lots of themes, lots of work going on, but nothing stands out. The production is another problem for me - super clear, but a bit lifeless. I hate that drum sound. It enhances my impression that this is all about surface-level flash. The vocals had a chance to pull this together and make it something special, but they sound pretty dull and automatic. I don't hate stuff like this if it's at least fun to listen to, but in this case it's not. So my take on it is that it is complete wank, and that it's not trying hard enough. Plenty of bands do shit like this; give me a reason to care.

[Iceni]

As far as I'm concerned the song ended at about 11 minutes. I really hate it when tech-death bands decide they need to fill a certain time and just use the latter half or third of a song to play some monotonous nonsense, and doing it for six minutes is a new low with regards to this peculiar tech-death trope. Still, considering this is Brain Drill, perhaps the worst and 'wankiest' tech-death band except for those paragons of pointlessness Spawn Of Possession, it wasn't as bad as I expected. It was definitely repetitive, which might not have been so bad if the riffs had been enjoyable. For the most part, though, this reminded me a bit more of new Neuraxis, new Miseration and everything ever done by Decrepit Birth; very robotic and generally lacking in any kind of meaningful creativity. There were about four relatively good bits in this song: -From the beginning to about 0:40 it sounded pretty decent, some fair riffs that had some direction. -2:44 backing riff reminds me a bit of Bolt Thrower -3:36 backing riff also reminds me of Bolt Thrower. -4:47 to about 5:13 reminded me a little of Gorod. However, this is not enough to fill sixteen bloody minutes! A five or six-minute song chaining these ideas together would have at least gone some way toward making it better. I expected this to be tortuously bad, and it was only boring on the whole. Overall, I'd say it's bloated and in that sense it's overdone. If you're looking for some really good brutal technical death metal give Element and Dominion a shot.

[Ghouly]

I have to second Father, pretty much summed it up for me. It's really a touch gratuitous.

[Iain Twiddy]

Yeah, this type of Death Metal is what I find ruins the genre for me. It's constantly crazy with no centre, no melody or narrative. There's no juxtaposition of contrasting parts, like slow/fast, melodic/dissonant. It all just comes out as bland noise I find. Obviously they are very good at their instruments, which I can appreciate, but they don't seem to have a knack for songwriting. It seems like these type of musicians are just trying to see who can play the fastest. I find that you get a lot more POWER out of the powerful parts of a song when they are offset by less powerful parts. There has to be a build-up, a calm-before-the-storm so to speak. Then when the really good part comes in it's that much better. So yeah, pretty boring and unimaginative, although they are obviously very technically proficient.

[Iceni]

Yeah' date=' this type of Death Metal is what I find ruins the genre for me. It's constantly crazy with no centre, no melody or narrative. There's no juxtaposition of contrasting parts, like slow/fast, melodic/dissonant. It all just comes out as bland noise I find. Obviously they are very good at their instruments, which I can appreciate, but they don't seem to have a knack for songwriting. It seems like these type of musicians are just trying to see who can play the fastest. I find that you get a lot more POWER out of the powerful parts of a song when they are offset by less powerful parts. There has to be a build-up, a calm-before-the-storm so to speak. Then when the really good part comes in it's that much better. So yeah, pretty boring and unimaginative, although they are obviously very technically proficient.[/quote'] This analysis is pretty spot on for Brain Drill most of the time but I'm not sure it's true for this song. This song is almost too structured.

[FatherAlabaster]

You're both right. I agree with Iain, none of the parts really has enough character or textural variation, and they don't allow for any of the ebb and flow that might lend a narrative arc to a song like this. The repetitive structure robs it of whatever remaining interest it might have had. It's far too obviously an attempt to impress. It's worth saying that this kind of structure isn't necessarily a bad thing; if they'd slotted in some more meaningful riffs and payed attention to pacing, it could have worked. But in this case they spent eleven minutes doing what it only takes most tech death three minutes to do: bore me to tears.

[Iain Twiddy]

You're both right. I agree with Iain' date=' none of the parts really has enough character or textural variation, and they don't allow for any of the ebb and flow that might lend a narrative arc to a song like this. The repetitive structure robs it of whatever remaining interest it might have had. It's far too obviously an attempt to impress. It's worth saying that this kind of structure isn't necessarily a bad thing; if they'd slotted in some more meaningful riffs and payed attention to pacing, it could have worked. But in this case they spent eleven minutes doing what it only takes most tech death three minutes to do: bore me to tears.[/quote'] Totally agree, I always feel like these type of musicians are wasted potential. So obviously talented, tight and skilled. Yet they bore the hell out of me. WTF! If only they could merge their skill with the creative writing of another artist and come up with something awesome.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Exactly like Yngwie Malmsteen. Obviously talented but oh so boring. The obvious comparison here is Spawn Of Possession though I was slightly less bored here. As Iceni said there are moments where one could be tricked into thinking they were listening to something which wasn't woefully dreary. I'm just surprised the Iceman neglected to mention Kronos.

[Iceni]

I'm just surprised the Iceman neglected to mention Kronos.

Oui, moi aussi. J'ai perdu un groupe Francais...quel catastrophe.