Sometimes, it’s not easy to label a band’s music, because ideas can deceive the sense of reality, what means that the best is to hear and check if you’ll like (or not) the band. It’s common to see different writers saying different things about a band’s musical work (we just want to give you all an initial idea, not the whole thing), and it’s better to hear it for yourself to have a better conclusion. This experience is needed when dealing with the Canadian quintet EXTERMINATUS, because “Echoes from a Distant Star Part 1” can cause confusions on your ideas about genres. Tabreez Azad (recordings and editions of the guitars), Max Sepulveda (sound engineering, mixing and editions of the drums, bass, vocals, guitars), Elia (recordings of the guitars), Lucas Abreu (recordings of bass), and Zack Ohren (mastering) form the team on the studio, and they created an aggressive and sharp sonority to allow the brutal work of the band to be heard and understood.

As guest on orchestrations on “Suffer in Silence”, here is Matt Sippola; and Bence Mezai (logo) and Mark Cooper (artwork) worked on the graphic presentation of the album, creating a fine piece of visual art. The band is labeled as a Technical/Groove Death Metal act, but such depiction isn’t fair, because some traits of traditional Death Metal and even Melodic Death Metal can be heard on their musical work, and far more than these. It’s brutal and technical, catchy and full of excellent instrumental arrangements that form a very good sheath for the death growls. It’s very good, indeed.

“Cosmic Disturbance”, “Primordial Sea”, “Starbound”, “Suffer in Silence”, “The Cloud”, “The New Theia”, and “The Signal” forms a very good and consensual set of songs that brings brutality (and in a sense that is hard to conceive if you’re attached to labels) with excellent technical arrangements and Groove traits, using excellent tempos shifts and an attack of excellent guitar riffs. But to show how their music can be amble and hard to foresee, the version for “Rock Me Amadeus”, an old success of Falco (a German singer whose name is linked to New Wave, Rock, Pop and Hip-Hop as well).

“Echoes from a Distant Star Part 1” is a very good release, indeed. But it seems that EXTERMINATUS still has some cards hidden in their sleeve for the future.