Terranoct - Icon of Ruin - Metal Epidemic

Terranoct – Icon of Ruin
Release Date: 28th April 2023
Label: Self Released
Bandcamp
Genre: Technical Death Metal, Death Metal, Thrash.
FFO: The Black Dahlia Murder, Death, Sylosis, Revocation, Psycroptic, Megadeth, Lamb of God, and Gojira.
Review By: Mark Young

Starting the last week in April, we are greeted with Ohio’s latest, Terranoct who combine speed and some incredible dexterity on display.

It is a 65-minute, direct, in your face event that has everything that you could want in heavy music. It’s incredibly well put together, sounds amazing and has some astounding moments of musicianship as they somehow navigate through a number of genres in the same song, all while keeping the sound unique to them.

There is some mixing of genres, as noted above, but not in a way that jars or feels odd. It’s just fantastic stuff. It’s like a who’s who of metal inspiration here – Megadeth, LOG, Death, and you will probably find your own here.

Meridian starts us off with an instrumental with hints of things to come. There are some Death-type sounding melodies here, which is always a good thing. Then they hit you with Omnipotence, an absolute furious banger that is rapid. There is some Necrophagist in there too, this is a top, top start.

And it doesn’t let up. At all, I could have filled the review with an essay on each song, but a word count is in place. Suffice to say that the madness continues through, with Cast in Stone Smashing you with a juggernaut of a LOG / Death hybrid with some mental guitar parts and a solid thrash riff, solid stuff with tempos here, there, and everywhere

Then they drop Heresy, and the ante is well and truly upped here as you think how have they gone better? They are in a hurry to kick your teeth in here.

They just continue this path, throwing scorchers everywhere until we get to Cerebral Strangulation. This is 7 minutes of joy, it just that good.

Paying homage to past gods, but taking what has been done and making it their own, as they are not content to stay with one riff shape or speed when three or more will do. This isn’t technical for technical sake, it’s just that way because that is how they write and somehow make it work. Now for the negatives. Because of how dizzying it is, some of the songs could have done with some ruthless attention in terms of length.

That is purely opinion on my part, and those who really love technical Death Metal will absolutely buzz off this. These are one to watch now, because their next release will have to go some to exceed what they have done today.