There’s been a bevy of blackened death metal so far this year. Aberration, a newer band, adds to that pool with their debut album, Refracture. Formed in 2020, this band has an EP and a split with labelmates Diabolic Oath currently out. As is the case with much of the content Sentient Ruin puts out, Aberration specializes in hell sounds. Unlike the moody, melancholic-yet-nightmarish nature of similar act Sacrificial Vein however, Aberration specializes in caustic, spiteful blackened death metal that seeks to crush you into a paste over the runtime. The debut LP is akin to stepping up to bat for the first time, so, how far does Aberration knock the proverbial ball?
As it turns out, pretty damn far. The pedigree of musicianship here is top-notch: Alex Walstad (Nothingness), Erik Christianson (ex Nothingness), John Hancock (Void Rot), and Dylan Haseltine (Suffering Hour). All four of these musicians know what they’re doing, and in turn, deliver a pretty remarkable debut album. The main standouts of this album are guitar and bass, and that’s due to producer Adam Tucker. His production work is why Dylan’s bass in particular is so deliciously thick that it cuts through the maelstrom of furious instrumentation and acts like a third guitar at points. Alex is a technical wizard at guitar, blasting through furious solos in songs such as “Antithesis” and “Interstitial Enmity”, John has the voice of an ancient spirit calling forth storms in all songs, and Erik’s drumming alternates from gravity blasting atop phat chugs to conjuring forth a march to the funeral pyre. Each of these songs are fantastic, and all of them crush the listener into a paste in different ways. Be it the near-industrial tinge on “Interstitial Enmity” or the apocalyptic nature of “Refracture”, Aberration for the most part knows how to write fantastic songs in this vein of death metal.
Which brings me to my point of critique: song length. None of the songs are under six minutes and can feel bloated as a result.. Case in point, “Wresting Vibrations”. Almost three minutes of noise are tacked on to the ending of the song, where it could easily have been 30 seconds or one minute, tops. Bloat can also be an issue, as there are points on this album, such as on “Refracture”, where an idea is repeated a few too many times to be worth an almost eleven minute behemoth. Make no mistake, though; Aberration have released a debut album that makes other bands in the disso-adjacent sphere look like chumps, and I cannot wait to see where they go next, especially if follow-up albums utilize the big booty bass that this record is chock-full of.
