Dysgnostic – Scar Echoes
Release Date: 11th November 2022
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Dissonant Death Metal, Progressive Death Metal, Brutal Death Metal.
FFO: Ulcerate, Gorguts, Devenial Verdict, Sunless, Morbid Angel.
Review By: Rick Farley
Eight years after the band released their original debut album The Dismal Ascension, then known as Defilementory, this critically acclaimed Danish brutal death metal band was rechristened Dysgnostic to reflect a more contemporary direction in their music. Adding more dissonance, technicality, and atmosphere to their extreme brutality. Even though the band has been around since 2010 under the old moniker, Scar Echoes will mark new beginnings as the band’s new debut album releasing on Transcending Obscurity Records. If you’re already familiar with the band, I can assure you the sheer viciousness of Dysgnostic has not changed one bit. If anything, it’s more pronounced and even harsher.
Scar Echoes is a momentous offering of fierce complexity, burning atmosphere, and discordant chaos. The record sounds massive, a dreaming behemoth of weaving venomous riffs, with earth-shattering heaviness. Dark expressions of dissonant ambience flutter about the way a severely injured bird would try to move its wings. Torturing, hopeless, and violent. Occasionally unconventional song structures, still breathe and flow with perpetual rhythms and dense grooves, while other atmospheres are just controlled chaos. Each one challenging the listener to continue on within the harsh, uneasy soundscape. The core elements of the original named band are well represented. Full of brutal death metal riffs, powerful blasting, and guttural lows, all still sounding ruthless. It’s everything in between, though, that makes Scar Echoes so beguiling. Horrifyingly intriguing in the same way people are captivated by the how and why serial killers kill, but intriguing nonetheless.
The sinuous airy distorted guitar melodies dance with deception on Silvery Tongues over relentless blasting, filled with callousness. On the verge of being frenzied chaos, the track is just a bloodied mouth taste of what’s to come. Beneath Abyssal Plains sees cleanly picked guitars have a strenuous melody during its middle section, leading into heavy distortion and short galloping riffs. Blackened elements take over, searing your senses with higher pitched, jagged tremolo picking. Ferocious bass pedal work, constantly bashing in your skull, putting you into a meditative state. Scion of Absence is a chaos filled, incongruous assault. Jarring chunks of groove, intertwined with dynamic off kilter drum fills, and fits of pure aggressive disharmony rage forward barbarically. A melodic guitar solo that builds itself into virtuosic sweeping, just slightly off rhythm, closes out the mayhem. Each and every nightmarish track contains heavy extremes but also droning qualities that ensnare the listener, forcing you to consume its hideous intricacies and accept your fate. A harrowing journey testing the limits of your psyche and the amount of atrocities you’re willing to undertake.
This is the kind of album that will remain with you for a prolonged period of time, beckoning for you to relisten. Musical carnage in the most gratifying way. An uneasy listening experience that begs for your full attention and demands ritualistic possession of your mind, body, and soul. Dysgnostic is (bassist/vocalist) Thomas Fischer, (lead guitar/ backing vocals) Simon Klem Kannegard, and (drums/guitars) Richard Olsen. No production credits are given, but the record is a fiery mix of crisp tones, searing leads, warm toned low end, dynamic percussion, and full-bodied growls. Everything seeps into your consciousness with potent clarity. A harsh, dissonant record for the modern. Scar Echoes is exciting, fresh, discordant, and easily an album that will see its name on many years end lists. 
(4.5 / 5)
