If one wants to experiment and expand limits of a Metal genre, the key to do so is to throw away musical conception previously learned, and learn to use your heart to do it. It's not only a matter of playing, but to search for different sonorities and other improvements. This is precisely what the French quartet CATALYST does on "A Different Painting for a New World", their latest release. Their musical work shown on the album could be characterized as an eclectic form of Technical Death Metal with inserts of Progressive Death Metal (due some melodies and arrangements that aren't usual for the genre, as clean parts, keyboards ambiences and clean vocals parts shown on "To Unleash Thy Heinous Fate", and some Middle-East melodies on "The Last Warning"), but one feature is clear: the band focus on explicit musical brutality, allowing the songs to be filled with Death Metal hooks that entangle and seduce the fans easily.

Their music is really grandiose, full of energy and aggressiveness. It's full of personality, blowing a new life into an eroded genre, and what perfect lyrics. And it's great! The sonority of the album seems to bring together elements of Death Metal and Progressive Death/Black Metal. It sound brutal and aggressive, with that extreme Metal impact, but in a way that can be understood by everyone, with excellent instrumental tunes.

"To Unleash Thy Heinous Fate" is a brutal song with many good shifts on the rhythms and a very good technical insight, presenting excellent guitars and keyboards ambiences. And overloading the technical insight of their music, "The Last Warning" is plenty of different arrangements, with excellent solos and duets of the guitars. With an extremely technical show of bass guitar comes "Worms and Locusts", another brutal song based on fast tempos, and with drums using and abusing of a solid technique. On "Arise of the Anathema", the band introduces the song with unusual elements before exploding its melodic lines with aggressiveness and technique, with excellent growls and snarls of the vocals.

In a trend a bit more nearer the classic form of Technical Death Metal, "Paragon of Devastation" has an oppressive inner strength based on the rhythmic conductions of bass guitar and drums. And the long "Behold Thy Purification" is another example of how doing the unexpected in a known Metal subgenre, full of rhythmic changes and contrasts between grunts and clean vocals, always sustained by lovely guitars' arrangements. "Peripeteia" is an introspective intro to open the way for "The Catalyst's End", a brutal and oppressive songs with extreme speed, but with unusual rhythmic contrasts. And "A Different Painting for a New World" is another excellent song, plenty of moments inspired by Progressive Rock (especially the clean parts).

Expect the unexpected on "A Different Painting for a New World", and enjoy the offering done by CATALYST. It's an amazing album, indeed.