About two years ago, Defiler burst onto the scene with the release of their “Cryomancer” music video which was met with very mixed reviews. Half of the people that heard this new song seemed to love it while the others hated it (and the video). Pangaea, the album that “Cryomancer” was taken off, followed the same trend. With the release of their new full-length album entitled Nematocera, Defiler attempt to silence the critics and prove that they are capable of more. Nematocera is set to release on October 9th via Razor & Tie Records.
The album opens with an effect that sounds a bit like a siren, which should set off alarms (pun intended) because of the heavy music that is about to hit you. The first two tracks, “Lucky 38” and “The Regulators”, are a good way to start the album but they lack any melody. However, from that point on, Nematocera is very well thought out and fairly melodic in comparison to Pangaea.
Tracks like “Octobortion” (featuring Frankie Palmeri of Emmure), “Walk In The Glow”, “Elmo St. Peters”, “Twinrova”, and “Nuclear Anomaly” are very strong instrumentally. Perhaps the strongest of them all (the one that I previously left out) is the instrumental title track that brings Nematocera to a close. “Nematocera” starts off beautifully with an acoustic guitar and the track remains calming until the last minute of the album when you’re hit with a chugging guitar. While there is chugging near the end, there is still a lot of melody which causes “Nematocera” to be a beautiful track from start to finish.
Another thing that surprised me on Nematocera was the appearance of clean vocals on a few tracks. Before you worry too much, there are no high-pitched, whiny, out of place clean vocals like we heard on Chelsea Grin’s Evolve. The ‘cleans’ on Nematocera actually slot in very well with the rest of the album. They sound like they’re half spoken, half sang; they are very distant and used only a few times.
Going into my first listen of Nematocera, I was expecting breakdowns and chugging coupled with beastly vocals and hard-hitting drums, and while that is the case for the most part, I was pleasantly surprised by the use of clean vocals and melodic segments. Because of that, Defiler has crafted a very stellar full-length album that has a fairly high replay value which is bound to give them more (positive) recognition.
Links: Facebook
