Having made quite a strong impression within the realms of technical death metal with their 2014 EP, Truth In Perception, the Wisconsin-based quintet Aronious are now poised to release their debut album, Perspicacity, which is set for release on March 13th via The Artisan Era. In the works for many year, and meticulously composed and recorded, this first full-length is a concept album — and a musically ambitious one that doesn’t follow all the standard tech-death tropes that you’ve become accustomed to by now.
So far, The Artisan Era has released three tracks from the album as signs of those ambitions and powerful accomplishments, and today we’re presenting the fourth and final advance track (among a total of 13 on the full album) before the record’s release next month. The song’s name is “An Assembled Reality“.
To be sure, on this new song, as on all the others, Aronious leave no doubt about their technical virtuosity and adventurousness. They dance a wild dance of rapidly skittering, furiously darting, and extravagantly swirling and screaming fretwork, coupled with athletic drumming and vibrant bass machinations. But the song is far from an unorganized blizzard of notes and beats, despite how quickly it changes, rapidly morphing into new patterns of sound.
Among other things the song makes room for bludgeoning brutality, through bursts of militarized drum munitions and clobbering chords, and the rapid-fire vocals are flat-out ferocious. But in addition, you’ll encounter doses of unnerving dissonance and alien melody, as well as a mesmerizing combination of fretwork frenzy, eerily gleaming ambient waves, and booming atonal pounding, together with another thoroughly engaging, prog-minded instrumental section and an intriguing, jazz-like keyboard outro over a head-hooking rhythm.
And so, while the band are quite adept at creating explosions of seeming chaos and mayhem, and leading the listener on wild thrill-rides, the song proves to be a cornucopia of contrasting sensations, all of it well-organized, and all of it together creating an experience that’s (perhaps unexpectedly)… enthralling. It’s also the kind of song that demands you come back to it, because there’s so much to take in — and so much left to discover as you begin getting a better grasp on all the moving parts and how well-connected they turn out to be.
Here is Aronious‘ own statement regarding Perspicacity:
“Perspicacity is our debut concept album that has been in the works for quite a long time. Some of the material was written even before our E.P ‘Truth in Perception‘ came out in 2014. We are happy to announce the long-awaited album for release in early 2020. We tracked all the instruments with our guitarist Nick Weyers at his studio and produced the album ourselves prior to sending it to Mark Lewis [Beneath the Massacre, Whitechapel, Arsis] for mixing and mastering. The recording process was a long and tedious one. Meticulously analyzing each section to be sure we brought something we felt to be very special to all who have waited and to all who will discover us with this new release. We are excited to bring you our most ambitious musical effort yet.”
Perspicacity comes strongly recommended by The Artisan Era for fans of groups such as Ulcerate, Gorguts, Gorod, Spawn of Possession, Blotted Science, Cynic, Soreption, Martyr, and Devolved.
In addition to today’s premiere, we’ve collected streams of all three previously released tracks from the new album — “The Passage of Knowledge“, “Inconclusive“, and “Delusions of Superiority“. And of course we’re also including links for pre-order of the album:
PRE-ORDER:
http://smarturl.it/ARON-BANDCAMP
https://smarturl.it/ARON-MERCH
ARONIOUS:
https://www.facebook.com/aroniousmetal
https://aronious.bandcamp.com/music