(This is our DGR’s review of Archspire’s new album, which was self-released on April 10th.)
While 2026 still finds itself on shaky ground overall, the opening few months have proven to be an interesting rollercoaster of releases in the heavy metal world. While we’ve had some decent gaps available for discovery, the still-young year has produced a fair share of surprises and a steady drip-feed of known names unleashing their latest monstrosities upon the world.
The most recent wave in particular has been among the more tech-death minded of the metal scene, with a small handful landing at near the exact same time, all with the general philosophy of keeping their foot planted firmly on the accelerator. The guiding light of “all X-games big ramp, all the time” is undeniable when it comes to the viewpoint of some of these bands, and no group has proven to be chief among them more than Canada’s Archspire, who released their newest album Too Fast To Die last week – their newest venture as an independent artist without a label.
photo by Alex Morgan
Given the sheer amount of musicianship that has been jammed into each Archspire album – so long as it stayed true to the “eight songs, thirty-five minutes” median pattern, save for Relentless Mutation which had the sheer gall of presenting only seven songs – it is hard to believe that it has actually been close to five years between the release of 2021’s Bleed The Future and their newest album. Man, pandemics really did do a fucking number on things, huh? Maybe it’s because of that aforementioned densely packed songwriting style that it actually hasn’t felt like that long between albums.
Archspire have made a name for themselves machine-gun firing more music within any particular song at incredibly high speeds for five albums now. Theirs is a tactic of juvenile obsession, both in terms of humor and musical velocity in about equal measure. Coupled with a subject matter of cursory science-fiction glances and body horror yanked whole hog out of movies and you have a band that’ve been doing fairly well for themselves operating under the rule of “cool”.
Too Fast To Die is the latest example of that and it is one that hasn’t come easy for the band either; the bowing out of their drummer Spencer – only to be replaced by…Spencer – who was one of their biggest calling cards with an Olympian level feat of endurance and speed on each album likely rocked the boat for the band, but also their choice to go fully independent when it came to Too Fast To Die means that you have an album with a lot to reckon with in Archspire’s case.
There’re a lot of factors to pick apart and explore in Too Fast To Die but there’s a creeping feeling that no album out there is more slavishly dedicated to the idea of being an Archspire album than this one is. You could even argue that how much enjoyment you get out of Too Fast To Die could boil down to just how much you like hearing the ideas from the titular “Bleed The Future” song from their last album eight times over. Because in this case, Archspire may be finding themselves attempting to communicate as a mythical Narcissus, where all the ideas that seem to be coming back to them sound like echoes of earlier adventures.
That’s not to damn our plucky Canadian Pikmin-resembling death metal boys to a life of melting into a flower, but when you’ve reached your fully evolved form as a meme where else are you going to go? You create a recognizable feedback loop wherein the excitement seems to come from moving in iterations rather than complete artistic evolution. Archspire take the idea of shooting straight to heart with Too Fast To Die and thus you wind up with an album dedicated to repeatedly telling you over and over that it is in fact an Archspire album, unshakeable in its convictions as it is.
Archspire still pull off some insanely cool moments on Too Fast To Die, but within the expected thirty-plus minute blur that is the first few listens to the album, it is hard to pin down individualized songs as easily as it has been in the past, save for opener “Liminal Cyper” – a song so hyper-active and technically focused that it is the musical equivalent of Archspire screaming in your face “Is this what you were looking for?!” over and over. This runs hand-in-hand with the titular closer “Too Fast To Die” charting a similar path, a fun bookend to the album which wraps the whole affair around to the same point where it started – just with the latter favoring a fretboard-on-fire approach as opposed to just lighting vocalist Oliver Rae Aleron on fire instead.
The melodic guitar lines that run riot across the entire song call to mind the group’s previous adventures that were lead-guitar heavy, especially in the case of immediate predecessor Bleed The Future, while the vocals are so relentlessly focused on new technique and rapid delivery that follower “Red Goliath” with its own batch of musical insanity winds up in the shadows until broken out on its own, when it is eventually revealed as a song that is really good at ticking off all the “Archspire song” boxes.
Archspire don’t strike as the sort of band who’re prone to creating musical sequels, but we do have a pattern developing of at least one song being introduced by vocal gatling gun descending into musical pyro-obsessed circus act, in the way “Carrion Ladder” does. The handful of times this happened on The Lucid Collective get their full vindication on Too Fast To Die, with “Carrion Ladder” serving as their paladin charging forward.
Archspire continue to tumble through start/stop madness as well, with a brief flirtation of death-doom in the rhythm segment of “Anomalous Descent” before it channels the tech-deathcore of recent Job For A Cowboy offerings with suitable brutality and a built-for-crowd-participation gang shout. The segment that does rear its head a lot are the stops for melodic breaks, which even four songs in start to become very noticeable throughout Too Fast To Die. Transitioning between differing tempos must be an exercise in insanity when it comes to what Archspire are doing, but even a crazier experiment that just doesn’t “work” starts to feel more welcome by the time the album ends.
It does seem, though, that Archspire have noted the power that lies in the song “The Vessel”, which is one of the more cinematic numbers for as remarkably level as Archspire play it on Too Fast To Die. If you were to imagine the maddening amount of polish and speed present within an Archspire album perfectly smoothing out a surface, the angular bumps and jagged approaches that twine their way around the neck of “The Vessel” are a gift to the mid-segments of Too Fast To Die as a whole.
If you view previous Archspire releases as their own sort of stellar nurseries, with each explosion eventually laying the groundwork for a new song on Too Fast To Die, then the sense of familiarity that is prevalent throughout the whole album is understandable. Archspire are doing what Archspire do best, which is to go incredibly fast and make few compromises in regard to that velocity worship. For many people, the album could be just as easily understood as Archspire doing the hits. If there was any one thing you might’ve heard from a previous Archspire disc that you wanted to hear again, there’s a hot chance it’s going to pop up at one point or another in Too Fast To Die.
Never let it be said that Too Fast To Die is an album short of ideas; it is an album chock-full of ideas, so long as those ideas are ones that Archspire has sought to expand upon from previous attempts. The new taste for melodicism is appreciable on the new album – it helps break up quite a few of the songs from boiling down to demonstrations of just how talented the guys are ,and yours truly is more than guilty of humming along to a few of them, something we never would’ve guessed at in the All Shall Align days of ride-bell abuse. That equally renewed focus on each member getting their own time to shine – bass in particular gets brought up quite a few times in the mix – means that Too Fast To Die remains on equal dynamic footing with Archspire’s previous two as well.
While Too Fast To Die doesn’t bring a whole lot that is insanely new to the table, what it does bring remains as insane as ever. Too Fast To Die’s prostrate dedication to Archspire’s career as a whole would mean nothing otherwise.
https://www.archspire.net/
https://archspire.bandcamp.com/album/too-fast-to-die
https://facebook.com/Archspireband