People think that Technical Death Metal is an evolution that happened when someone in the 90s thought ‘hey, let’s put more technique into such an illiterate genre’, what in fact that is a fallacy. Since the beginning, releases as “Seven Churches”, “Leprosy”, “Altars of Madness”, “Eaten Back to Life” and others depicted a very good technical level on their songs. It’s obvious that the technical care into Technical Death Metal is far beyond it was before, but Death Metal never was technically illiterate. And the North American quintet BRUTALISM is here to show that they want to tear the world apart with “Solace in Absurdity”, their first full-length.

The album depicts a massive and aggressive sonority, but using a more traditional insight. It depicts something looking for a more traditional set of instrumental tunes, but searching for something that can be easily understood at first hearing as well. It’s clear that their efforts in the future in this direction must be better worked, but’s not bad by now. And what a killer artwork created by Moon Ring Design. In the most rigid sense of the term, the quintet isn’t working on a Technical Death Metal trench, but combines it with influences of Brutal Death Metal (on the slower tempos) and traditional Death Metal. Regarding the due proportions, they sound as a technical and brutal incarnation of CANNIBAL CORPSE on “Vile” days (pay attention: these words aren’t stating that they such thing or a clone, but a band that works on such way with a personal insight). Technical, brutal and catching, their music is really very good, and it’s a guarantee that your bones will not stay intact as their music rolls on.

Blast beats in profusion, contrasts of fast and mid tempos, and brutal to the core, the songs of the band are really very good with fine moments heard on “Asphyxiating on Vomitous Excretion” (the contrasts are clear on this one, with very good ‘corpsegrindian’ tunes on the vocals), “Astrocytomic Hemorrhaging” (excellent technical contrasts, with a very good set of parts from bass guitar), “Accelerated Decrepitude” (that follows the same tendency of the previous one, but with better guitars), “Flesh Pyramid” (the onslaught imposed by the drums is truly amazing), “Compulsive Acts of Repulsion” (the slower moments are really amazing, filled with technical parts of bass guitar and double bass moments on the drums), and “Elimination of the Heliosphere” and “Asyncritus”.

It’s obvious that “Solace in Absurdity” shows some points that the band’s music could be better, but BRUTALISM’s tendency is to evolve and grow.