Italian tech-thrash/death metal mutants Miscreance sound like they were built in a lab from the best wrong parts of several different eras. On Reminiscence, the Northern Italian quartet take the old-school technical death metal blueprint—Death, Atheist, Coroner, Sadus, all the good stuff—and drag it through a prehistoric hallucination full of tribal percussion, psychic violence, alien ritual and fretboard abuse.
Out May 28 via Season of Mist, Reminiscence follows Miscreance’s 2022 full-length Convergence, but this is not simply another exercise in retro worship. Yes, the riffs splinter, twist and slash with late-’80s/early-’90s precision. Yes, the tempos turn on a dime. Yes, the band look and sound like people who have worn out more than one copy of Human and Unquestionable Presence. But Reminiscence also pushes deeper into concept and atmosphere, imagining a lost civilization that feels both ancient and impossibly futuristic.
“After meandering through the sands of time, we are finally unearthing our new album Reminiscence,” Miscreance tell Decibel. “Each of the nine songs on the album take a look into a forgotten past. Together, they merge into a mind-altering experience.
“Reminiscence is a concept album that tells the story of a lost civilization, suspended in time. Gifted with psychic powers and driven by an insatiable hunger for prey, this civilization once lived in symbiosis with nature, only for their age of splendor to give way to inexorable decline.
“While writing, we pushed ourselves toward a state of total neural unity, just as the lost tribe at the heart of our story once did. We became so deeply captivated by the concept that we decided to reinterpret the lost album as coherently and faithfully as possible, bringing its sound to life again through an array of tribal and unconventional instruments, unearthly time signatures and ritualistic chants.
“Lose yourself into the abyss and find your true self beyond the edge of reality!”
That perspective gets weird fast. Opener “Trait d’Union” doesn’t simply explode out of the gate; it lures the listener in with bouncing, ritualistic percussion before the band start cutting through dimensions. “Scalp Ceremony” folds bongos into its bloodthirsty thrash attack. Elsewhere, Miscreance thread strange tongues, telepathic dissection, jungle horror and celestial death through nine tracks of restless, technically ridiculous extreme metal.
Stream Reminiscence in full below.
The post Album Premiere: Miscreance – <i>Reminiscence<i/> appeared first on Decibel Magazine.
