My morning or afternoon walks are always a good reason to start the day off. And that is to clear my head on what to do for the day or evening. I always take with me my old iPod Touch to hear music and old-time radio dramas such as Escape and the 1983 NPR edition of The Empire Strikes Back. Whether it’ll move me or keep me on the edge of my seat. It’s always been with me for many years to see which band or artist that has been with me from day one. But there’s one band that’ll have your feathers ruffling.
That band is From Dying Suns. A band that started back in 2016 in their hometown in Quebec City as they were originally known as Jupiter’s Red Eyes, containing members from Augury, Killitorous, First Fragment (live), Aeternam, Obliveon, Epiphanie, and Contemplator. When they released their first EP the same year entitled Transcending Flesh, they took a long hiatus.
Now in 2024, From Dying Suns have unleashed their first full-length album entitled Calamity. The album cover’s artwork and design are done by Etienne Jean and Dominic Dionne. The cover is a gem, paying tribute to the covers of the PlayStation game covers that sparkled your childhood growing up and playing the console, nonstop. The concept behind Calamity is based around their geeky love of games such as Ghost & Goblins and the Castlevania franchise where our main hero travels through different levels such as catacombs, burning villages, and multiple forests.
I mean, that’s a lot of courage and a big stamp of approval by paying tribute to the video game world, nonstop. When I think of the progressive rock bands that came out of both Canada and France, alongside Rush and MAGMA, I think of VOIVOD, Maniege, Harmonium, Atoll, Morse Code, Ange, Mona Lisa, and Shylock. For a band to be a part of the progressive world in the death metal universe, From Dying Suns will knock your socks off, really quick.
Guitarists Mathieu Roy-Lortie and Maxime Rochefort, bassist Christian Pacaud, vocalist Mathieu Dhani, and drummer / mellotron master lord Antoine Baril, are like sticks of dynamite, ready to explode at any second. This is death progressive metal at its best! And let me tell you something, this band have this massive giant battering ram with a shit ton of ammunition ready to as Slayer would put it, Reign in Blood!
Snarling, Cookie-Monster vocals, machine gun bass drum pedals, blood-thirsty riffs, and heavy bass tones, Calamity is the right place at the right time to lay out some of the centrepieces they’ve endured. From the throbbing headbanging techniques layered between ‘Turn Undead’ and ‘Claustrophobic’ it could be described being locked in this hell-hole, trying to break free from the all of the barriers and escape the loony bin with someone that’s about to crack at any second.
It’s not just the thrash techniques that’s there with some howling momentum of the Bay Area scene of the 1980s, but channeling the Killing Technology-era from the Noise years in 1987 where the Metal scene in Montreal starts to grow really big! Lortie and Rochefort are like mad scientists creating these mind-blowing leads and riffs, taking a duelling motif from one another.
There’s no competition between the duo, but a brotherhood that they have with one another. And if you think that there going to pull a Limp Bizkit motif, guess again. I can hear the Kill ‘Em All-era where they channel the climax of ‘Seek and Destroy’ and the ‘Phantom Lord’ like a stick of dynamite ready to explode during Metallica’s golden years.
‘Gehenna’ is a march to the battlefield with chaotic results. Baril’s drum playing has these massive guns going off in a blaze of glory when he hits those intense beats on the bass drums which sound like machine gun fire. And you have to give Pacaud credit also when he comes to the forefront by playing with a challenging fret line on his instrument.
He isn’t plucking like those bass players who would use two fingers, but going into the deep layers of madness that’s waiting for them before he gives the doubling guitarists and Antoine’s mellotron for a brief moment with more ammunition on ‘Vereor Nox’. Pacaud’s playing can be taken from the aspects of Geddy Lee, Cliff Burton, and Jean-Yves Theriault that comes to mind.
After going through some of the heavier material, ‘Respite’ gives the rhythm section a break and break out their acoustic guitars, laying down the darkness approaching the forest with its Crimson-like folk pastures with keyboard string sections, setting up the mood for what’s about to happen the following morning.
There’s a bit of the symphonic metal approach which speak of Within Temptation, but there’s also some iazzy elements, King Crimson’s ‘The Court of the Crimson King’, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s ‘From the Beginning’ that might had had an inspiration during the making of the composition in the middle of a campfire to bring the calm before the storm.
The result, From Dying Suns are here to stay for 2024. Calamity is one of those albums that’ll be up there in your record collection for the time being. It’s brutal, in-your-face, rib crunching, and a blistering progressive death metal sound that is like a flaming fire that’ll never burn out for a very long, long time.
