Deviant Process – Nurture
Release Date: 15th October 2021
Label: Season of Mist Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Technical Progressive Death Metal
FFO: Beyond Creation, Cynic, Gojira, Death.
Review By: The Wayfaerer
Prog death and I have never really gotten along. I’ve always leaned more towards the melodic side of metal where the songs were always in clear identifiable parts, chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-solo, that whole sort of thing. They were easy to listen to, easy to remember, easy to pick out. So, when confronted with prog death or just progressive music in general, it was always jarring to my ears. It’s only in recent years that I’ve begun to acquire a taste for the sound, so you may take this from the perspective of a prog-death newbie. With that disclaimer now out of the way, let’s look at the album that not only managed to make me appreciate prog-death a whole lot more, but might actually have turned me on to the genre. That being Deviant Process’ Nurture.
Hailing from Quebec City, the quartet that is Deviant Process started in 2008 when guitarist Jean-Daniel Villeneuve was operating a one-man symphonic black metal outfit called Psychic Pain. His demo caught the attention of fellow guitarist Stéphane Simard who came together to form Deviant Process. After a rotating list of bassists and drummers, the spots were eventually filled by Phillippe Cimon and Michel Bélanger respectively. After a two song EP and their first full-length offering of Paraxysm, the band is back with their new album, Nurture. Villeneuve and Simard state that the band have been working on this album for almost four years and have taken full advantage of that time to make this album as tight and as polished as possible. So, has it worked?
Villeneuve has stated that the band wasn’t interested in showing off and just playing a million notes a second in a display of guitar wankery, they’re just interested in making kickass songs. Simard backs this up by stating that “The container is more important than the contents” backing up that the song structure needs to be in place before you put in all the riffs, harmonies, melodies, and whatnot. Which brings us nicely to the music itself. Nurture is eight songs long, but it feels a lot longer, and one of the main factors to that is how each song is made. When you listen to the opener In Worship, In Blood, it feels like all the instruments are doing their own thing and then were smashed together to form a song, but despite how that sounds, it all manages to work. The guitars are independent from the bass while also being independent from each other and the drums tie it all together to make a coherent song. But it’s not just pure death metal that’s present either. Deviant Process wears it’s influences on its sleeves, and you can tell. The opening bars of The Blessings of Annihilation Infinite reminded me of the post-rock group Pelican. Syrtis Magna opens on a Latin acoustic guitar flourish before tearing into a riff that sounds like it came straight out of Death’s Symbolic album. And those are just the ones that I caught; I’m sure a more seasoned prog death aficionado will pick up a lot more. As well as paying homage to other bands, Nurture also introduces various other foreign genres to mix in to give the songs extra garnish. There’s tribal fusion inspiration from In Worship, In Blood. Syrtis Magna adds in Latin Folk. Asynchronous has bits of 90’s Rush that show up here and there. This album has so many different elements that should clash together and make the whole album sound like an incoherent mess, but surprisingly, it all works. It all fits together in ways that you never would have thought. Each song doesn’t feel like one song. It feels like three songs smashed together. One song is progressive rock, the second is death metal, and the third is a random third genre that shows up out of nowhere. And somehow, it all works. And it works gloriously.
As for drawbacks, well that’s a bit more complex. The musicianship is top notch. The mixing is top notch. The artwork is badass. I’m honestly struggling to find something wrong with this album. I guess you could say that the songs sometimes drag out a bit too long, the shortest being the Obliveon cover Cybervoid clocking in at just under four minutes. all the rest are over five minutes long with two over seven and a half minutes. Also, I would struggle to recommend this album to anyone who doesn’t already like prog death or enjoys simpler, easy listening songs. Nurture is long, complex, and you really have to pay attention to it to really appreciate the masterpiece that these boys from Quebec have created. Overall fantastic. Give it a listen when you can.
(5 / 5)
