(This is DGR’s review of the debut album from Epigram, the SoCal-based project of musician Luis Echevarria, who is accompanied on the album by drummer and additional vocalist Mikey Wilson.)
Believe it or not, the album you see before you here is not the first time we have reached across the expanse of the internet to discuss Southern California death metal group Epigram. While it is tempting to act as if we made it on the ground floor of their newest release Obsolescent, in actuality we spoke of the band way back in the horse-drawn cart days of 2017, briefly mentioning them among an absolute wall of releases in our year-end roundup, in the segment we dedicate to writing about all the EPs of the year.
Eight and a half years is a long time though, enough that we can cycle back around to the exact same dogshit world state – and the people running it – and yet the band themselves had, up until early March, been radio silent. Their re-emergence in early March with Obsolescent is – thanks to time – almost a relaunch of the band. With only an EP to their name before, it can seem as if the Los Angeles based crew are fresh faces on the scene, but surprisingly, even with that vast expanse of time between releases it sounds as if Epigram have taken the route of natural maturity on their previous sound as opposed to full-blown relaunch, creating blackened death metal with a very, very light symphonic touch that could easily have fought blow for blow with the mid-2010’s releases from Hour Of Penance like Paradogma and Sedition.
Obsolescent is a creature that knows exactly what it is, thankfully, and thus it wastes very little time with the idea of pretense. It is eight songs and about twenty-eight minutes long, averaging out to a bludgeoning collection of three and a half minute barn burners save for the introductory segue of “Myrmidon”. Epigram move with the subtlety of a drunk bulldozer operator who forgot to lock the parking brake on a hill, crashing and smashing their way through multiple buildings over the course of each song.
Favoring a sort of unchanging, never-ceasing, pulse-of-the-world and Bolt Thrower-eseque style double-bass roll, you could argue that Epigram are not a band appealing to the highest sensibilities when it comes to their music. It is brutality written for brutality’s sake, and because the brutality machine feeds off such brutality, it requires fuel for the fire that Epigram are more than happy to provide across the course of Obsolescent.
The band sound gigantic, taking advantage of a few computerized synth lines to add the occasional orchestral backing to some songs – which does the lion’s share of melodic heavy lifting at times – while the constant rolling pulse and very, very up-front vocals production guarantees that the album never comes to a halt. If you yearn for the style of death metal that could move earth by energy and effort alone, then Epigram’s sonic-rolling-waves approach could sate the desire for savagery.
“Wrath Of Betrayed” does a good job providing a snapshot of how Obsolescent will move as a whole, the aforementioned hefty double-bass roll providing the forward momentum for much of the album. The songs on Obsolescent all have one or two really powerful lead-guitar melodies that help break the song apart from the pack and “Wrath Of Betrayed” is the flag-bearer for that trope early in the album. Coupled with a trident-pronged vocal attack and the occasional orchestral swell, and “Wrath Of Betrayed” earns its stripes as a modern blackened death metal song.
It’s not a humongous spectacle in terms of overall bombast but it is a huge-sounding song – which like mentioned before – becomes a calling card of the album as a whole. Guitarist Sanjay Kumar (Inferi, Wormhole) provides a guest solo within “Wrath Of Betrayed” as well, and then pops up again during the high-shriek powered “No Sin” just two songs later.
“Hour Of Gods”, for instance, follows in similar footsteps after its beginning bit of scene-setting but then unleashes itself as if it were a song that unsung group Order Ov Riven Cathedrals had slammed together during their prolific period, all hammering drums and huge groove to keep a song moving. The sheer kinetic energy quickly smooths over all awkward approaches or strange transitions. “Hour Of Gods” is carved with a militaristic precision and is purposeful in forcing its listeners back to the grunted chorus over and over. If all roads lead to a city, all paths of “Hour Of Gods” will lead back to the orchestral sting and “hour of gods” line.
We’re simple creatures around here, so a song titled “Necro Sun” is guaranteed to grab attention as if it were a neon-lit sign on a darkened street. Laying late in the tracklisting, “Necro Sun” shares a lot of similarities with its surrounding brethren but is also a song wherein the blackened side of the “blackened death metal” venn diagram starts to win out. The drumming in the song is relentlessly precise throughout – enough to make Hate salivate even – and the guitars sound apocalyptic as they carve through riff after riff.
“Necro Sun” is a song in which it is readily apparent that the keys will do a good chunk of the melodic heavy lifting though. Epigram never fully give in after dancing on that precarious line and it is appreciable that they do have a taste for guitar-driven melodies in every song, but “Necro Sun” bounces between the two with enough force to crack walls.
“Maelstrom” following is Epigram’s true epic for Obsolescent. It is not the most “cinematic” in its movements – “Hour Of Gods” and “The Usurpers Throne” have a more film maker’s focus on transitions in comparison – but “Maelstrom” wins out on the heft and length front. Epigram play the mad scientist and try to crash every element of their album from preceding tracks into one song until “Maelstrom” actually does wind up sounding somewhat like a maelstrom. After seven songs of swelling guitar and glorious battle in musical form, “Maelstrom” becomes a song that is just as fun to pick apart as it is to listen to.
Obsolescent has all the tattoos and scars of a project that is aiming for massive sound, and for the most part Epigram have nailed that objective to the floor. It is not a perfect album given its single-minded focus on unceasing forward momentum, but it remains consistently heavy throughout, and each broken-out melody is like nectar from the heavens. It’s a smart move. As the rhythm segments of each song are relentlessly violent, enough that even after twenty-eight minutes you feel like you’ve been rattled across the room, there is always some sort of guitar solo, lead line, or melody provided by the keys to reserve a song some space in the attention centers of the brain.
Epigram sound like they’re either gearing up for war or in the middle of an execution of one on the heavens themselves with their take on the blackened death metal genre. With a light dusting of choir and keyboard work to assist in achieving their gargantuan ambitions, Epigram have created some undeniably solid work on Obsolescent that would take multiple bunker-busters to get through.
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