By: John McLaughlin
Noneuclid | website | facebook | twitter | bandcamp |
Released on May 6, 2014 via Blood Music
Ever hear an album that was less than the sum of its parts? Where everything seems to fit together, everything is executed perfectly, but the whole thing just feels like it’s lacking something?
On the surface, German progressive death/thrashers Noneuclid do everything right on their new album Metatheosis. The musicians are all extremely capable, the songs are tightly performed, and the recording – while definitely suffering from too much compression – is clean without being too sterilized. And for all its precision, it also manages to avoid sounding fake or overbearingly perfect, a definite plus. But despite its advantages, Metatheosis never wows or impresses.
Soundwise, Noneuclid bear similarities to Meshuggah, newer Testament, and Voivod. Their bassist, Linus Klausenitzer, is probably better known as a member of tech-death wizards Obscura, while the other three members are members of melodic black metallers Dark Fortress (guitarist V. Santura is also a member of Triptykon). That lineup has a hell of a lot of promise, but unfortunately it just doesn’t come together on Metatheosis, an album full of twists and turns but not much excitement.
There are two major problems that hurt this album. The first is the lack of energy, a fatal flaw to any metal band whose genre doesn’t contain the word “doom” or “sludge” in it (and while Noneuclid have some doomy elements, it’s not enough to get by). Metal is, at the very least, supposed to force you to headbang; if it can get you to thrash around maniacally and throw yourself into walls, so much the better. But at no point during Metatheosis did I feel those urges. The album sounds heavy, but what good is heaviness if it doesn’t make you do anything?
The other issue – some of which is attributable to the lack of energy – is the lack of memorability. Noneuclid is obviously not a band that strives to be catchy, which is certainly no problem, but even bands that stretch into the most dissonant, twisted reaches of this genre can still manage to be memorable. The groovy chugging and complicated song structures on Metatheosis just seem to meander and go nowhere; even with repeated listening, none of the riffs stick out and nowhere does an awesome climactic moment appear.
It’s possible that I’m missing some inner brilliance to this album, but after a while, you just have to acknowledge that an album doesn’t work for you, and Metatheosis is one such album. For all of the band’s strengths, it just feels like something is missing, like the album is less than the sum of its parts. And it’s a shame, because a lineup this talented should certainly be capable of hitting it out of the park.
