Gorgatron - Sentience Revoked

Gorgatron – Sentience Revoked
Release Date: 21st June 2023
Label: Redefining Darkness Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Technical Death Metal.
FFO: Hate Eternal, Suffocation, Morbid Angel, Necrophagist, Origin.
Review By: Mark Young

The 4^th album from the North Dakota brutalists Gorgatron comes with quite the promising spin, there’s riff madness, blastbeats and shredding of the throat singing. Based on this, what is not to like? Well, it depends on how you take your brutality. If it is that low register, one-speed attack, then it can leave now. Luckily for me, it’s quite the opposite.

Divulgence is in your face from the start, crunching riffs and all the beats you can eat. No melodic introduction or orchestral pieces, it lays down a marker for what you can expect for the next 31 minutes, which is rapid fire metal that brings the brutality without forgetting to bring the songs. It has an almost dirty guitar tone, so when they drop to the lower registers it’s like driving over the rumble strips on a motorway and there is a break which mixes in those discordant harmonies with a glorious low end. Lead growler Karl Schmidt is taking no prisoners here as they rip into Conduit of Pain. Techy riff breaks and supreme drum fills are the order of the day, coming together to leave you with an earworm of the extreme kind. Throw in some whammy bar abuse and it’s two for two. My favourite is next – Blatant De-Evaluation boots off with an urgent riff that gives it a feeling of super-speed. It’s up there with one of my songs of the year, heavy, speedy and doesn’t overstay its welcome. The ending blast / slow down is royal, imagine a Kaiju flattening Tokyo and you get the picture.

Omnipotent Error keeps that high quality bar in place, riffs coming in at every angle whilst Matt Johnson keeps everyone else in check with his drums, marshalling the team accordingly. It’s another cracking example of a band who know what to put in a song and when to finish it. There is no fat anywhere on here, Absorbency comes in and flattens with probably the most direct attack on the album. Implosive goes down the controlled route, starting off with a cool riff pattern that leads into the closest thing to a melodic break. Don’t worry because the high-octane speed comes back in and then they step up with Unaligned as it takes a flier, a stomper that just starts fast and stays there. Voiceless has that classic Old School growled start that tears into a Morbid Angel love-in, in that I mean there is that fearlessness in throwing those discordant noises in and making it work.

Ascending Stagnation is the final offering, and has a glorious start to it, a grooving beast that brings more whammy abuse amongst some fret-burning lead work, and although it’s an instrumental, I’ll let them off as it is the last track, and when the songs before it has been this good, they did the right thing by leaving it till last.

It is the sort of thing I love, taking what we love about extreme metal and giving it a stamp of individuality, as opposed to purely aping those that came before. It makes reviewing it so much easier, as you are enthused by it, which in turn allows the words to almost write themselves. As noted, this is their 4^th album, and if you don’t know who they are, then this is the perfect place to step on. It’s quality right through from start to finish with no drop off in quality or energy. What you find is that they don’t allow themselves to stay in one lane, crossing the white line numerous times to serve the song. When they do mix those styles in, the result is a seamless blend that hits every time. Go and get it.