Neuraxis produce an impressive but ultimately uninspiring album of technical death metal.
Neuraxis are a veteran death metal band who, despite originating in a land more noted for it's pop punk groups than extreme metal (Canada), have put together a fourth album of impressive heaviness and quality. This is also intermingled with melodic sections, while still retaining the brutal atmosphere that hangs over the album.
Whilst musically Neuraxis wear their death metal credentials on their collective sleeve, lyrically 'Trilateral Progression' is a strange beast. Not many death metal albums begin with the line "Wisdom is the apex of intellectual performances" and end with "temporal cycles, hidden melody of the stellar regulations". This pretentious naval-gazing might be unintentionally hilarious, more suited to the pseudo-intellectual posturings of a self-absorbed teenager than anything else. But the lyrical, ahem, "uniqueness" of 'Trilateral Progression' has no bearing on the music, and it's also almost applaudable that the band are at least trying to do something a bit different with their musings.
The heavy but intensely melodic metal of Neuraxis brings to mind the likes of Dark Tranquility with it's mesmerizing rhythms and hook-laden, but complex take on the growls'n'riffing formula. Songs such as 'Shatter the Wisdom', with its technical guitar work and gutteral yet also largely comprehensible vocals capture the largely ear pleasing take on death metal that Neuraxis peddle. It's all very impressive and such. So why the mid-score? 'Trilateral Progression' has, to me, two faults. Firstly, while initially ten tracks seems like a decent amount, when three of those are under two minutes long, and none manage more than six, it's simply too short for a full-length album. This wouldn't matter if every second of the CD was excellent, absorbing and had you reaching for the rewind button. Children of Bodom manage to do the thirty minute long melodic death metal (albeit of a completly different hue to this) thing and make it, work, but with a large part of Neuraxis' latest simply passing the listener by, it all feels a little souless and, well, dull. It certainly has its moments: the last third of 'Clarity' and the intro of 'Monitering the Mind', for instance. However, there's too little of these moments and too much of the largely unfaultable, but also largely uninspiring ones that, while they don't make you want to switch off the CD, inevitably lead your attention to wander onto other things. Perhaps it's the quality of the best bits, and they really are something, in terms of songwriting, technical skill and all-out foot-tapping catchiness, that makes the rest of the album seem a little uninspiring, but largely 'Trilateral Progression' is just a pretty good album, and not an excellent one.
Neuraxis are certainly talented, and this is certainly a well put together and pleasant album. But it's missing something - perhaps a bit of spontaneity amongst the correct-to-the-millisecond technicality - and as such isn't something that'll stay in your CD player for the next three months or whatever. Guitar geeks are sure to love this, and I doubt anyone could really call it a bad album, but for me at least it's nothing particularly special.