There’s nothing worse than not being able to get out the reviews that you’ve been meaning to get out and having them all pile up on you while you’re out every night with your girlfriend. Sadly, that’s my reality at the moment and now I’m on the grind to get these backed up albums out as fast as possible. Tonight’s review is of an album that’s already been released for a few weeks now and hopefully you’ve caught wind of that and picked it up, but in case you haven’t; ladies and gentlemen, Arkaik’s Metamorphignition.
Riverside County’s five-piece progressive death metal band called Arkaik has been around for approximately seven years now and sadly this is only the first I’m hearing of them. Most likely because they only released their first promo back in 2009 and their debut album with Unique Leader Records a little while later. Their second album via Unique Leader Records entitled Metamorphignition had me stumped for a few seconds while I squinted and tried to decipher just what the heck the album was called and how it was pronounced. Regardless, I picked the album up and threw it down for some spins to see just what I was working with.
Arkaik is a purely genuine mix of both technical and progressive death metal that works well with well done growls and low vocals. The ten track album was surprisingly longer than almost all of the albums I’ve reviewed so far. Ten tracks accumulating 53.7 minutes of sheer technical death metal. I was a little bummed when I first saw the length of the songs. Don’t get me wrong, I love death metal and I know the songs tend to be a little longer than most, but once I spun the album I realized my fears had become a reality. The album had way too much time wasted and dragged on throughout the entire release with too many long pauses between songs.
I’m more than aware that bands use that to introduce one track into the other but I didn’t get that feeling when I listened to Metamorphignition. I started to get a little annoyed that I had to stop what I was doing to switch to the next song because I didn’t want to sit there for anywhere ranging from thirty seconds to over a minute of just pure audio bits and “interludes” after and in the middle of the majority of the songs. The album easily could have been cut down ten whole minutes if they just started and ended each track like most bands do. I respect them for trying to give the album an atmosphere of its own but it just didn’t work to their advantage as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t like having all that spare time not used to its full potential. Arkaik could have created at least two songs out of the time they would have saved cutting out those pauses.
Regardless of the aforementioned flaw, the guitars and drums are so incredibly fast-paced in this release. I really do love the whole death metal sound that they create because it truly is progressive at times and technical the majority, which is great if you’re a death metal fan. The lows were basically the same throughout the entire release which is also a solid thing. I wasn’t looking for anything special and clearly the band wasn’t into doing all kinds of different things and stuck with one particular vocal range that worked well with the rest of the sound.
Overall, Arkaik dropped a solid death metal album in Metamorphignition that could have been changed in small aspects to make a bigger impact on the listener’s overall thoughts of the album but what they have in its finished stage is also something that most listeners will still enjoy if this is their style of music.
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