
There are bands that delight in throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, the wall being the listener. Afterbirth is one of those bands and their 2020 album Four Dimensional Flesh felt almost as greatly nonsensical as its eye-catching name. A memorable release, it did not quite reach my favorites that year but it did put the band on my radar and I still enjoy it whenever I give it a spin. Picking up In But Not Of for review, I was excited to hear what new ideas the band would bring to match that wildly bright Alex Eckman Lawn cover art. Afterbirth in 2023 delivers on that front, although this new album might be a bit less rooted in Brutal Death Metal than its predecessor. The Post-Metal influence is dialed up a bit and the band again reaches into what I would call Relaxing Death Metal territory (RXDM is a term me and a colleague have made up to describe Death Metal that plays around with relaxing atmospheres and major key playing at the same time as being heavy, think bands like Sweven, Gold Spire and in part, this year’s Tomb Mold). The production on Four Dimensional Flesh was already dynamic but In But Not Of feels even softer, the Death Metal can still be felt but does not feel as raw as before. At first it would be hard to notice as the first five tracks keep the tempo up and features plenty of sharply toned guitars. Early album highlight “Devil With Dead Eyes” breaks out with a great squealing runaway solo and “Vomit on Humanity” features plenty of sharp turns with some Voivod-leaning riffs. Yet in most of these tracks the music floats out into space briefly.
“Hovering Human Head Drones”, true to its name, makes this direction suddenly overt and it resembles more a mood rather than a clearly arranged song. In But Not Of transpires much in the same way in its second half and while the experiments are interesting, they do slow down the pace quite a bit. “Angels Feast On Flies” for instance, starts out in a great way with urgency, but over the course of its runtime the track stomps in place and is suddenly over. A lot of the later tracks resemble experiments that are tacked on at the end. One could think that Four Dimensional Flesh‘s strength was in its ability to surprise, but I have come to think that it is as simple as good pacing. That album had a way to shove you between its ideas at a steady pace, making its appeal resemble that of Grindcore songs. The same applies here, but between “Vivisected Psychopomp” and “Death Invents Itself”, there are four tracks that float directionless in space. Afterbirth still peddle a great mix of Death Metal and odd soundscapes and they have in part managed to fulfill expectations. But In But Not Of (say that ten times fast) would score higher with me if it had also been edited to create a better flow throughout. Experimentation is both the band’s greatest strength and their weakness. One can hope In But Not Of grows with time as its best material is year-end-list quality stuff, but this year the competition in the Death Metal space arena is stiff.