HIERARCHIES is a death metal band who are releasing their debut self-titled album through Transcending Obscurity Records. Featuring members of DWELLING BELOW and ACAUSAL INTRUSION, the band has dropped a bomb of a debut.  This is exactly the kind of tech death I like! It’s riff-based and doesn’t sound overly sporadic with endless noodling. The songs are ever changing–both from one to the other and within the songs themselves. Moments come and go, eschewing repetition for imaginative extreme songwriting. The tempo isn’t always fast, the band is very comfortable using slow to mid-tempos when necessary. Moments of speed are plenty but, oftentimes, they are interspersed between other approaches. I like this format a lot because it makes everything much more memorable and decluttered.

Although the songwriting is outstanding, the true MVP is the production. Unlike a thousand tech death albums I could name, the band didn’t opt for an overly produced, shining album to highlight their talent. This album is murky, dismal, swampy, scary and just straight-up nasty in its presentation. Good. I will say that a few of the songs could probably shave a minute or so off the runtime but that's per usually for anything techy, at least for me. You're thoughts on that will, of course, be different perhaps. The first song, “Entity,” opens with a ton of atmosphere, combining twisting riffs with deceptively simple tones that swirl together. This frothing abyss goes back and forth upon waves of darkness, casting out riffs that are slow and depressing to faster, bite-sized chunks of sudden malevolence. The vocals are sick as hell—very high quality! The song goes insane around the halfway mark as if the first half was just one trip down a rabbit hole. Here, the impact is imminent and the pain is great.

If a portal opened in the sky and demons flew out, “Dimension,” would be the song I would play while I try not to get murdered. The opening solo is chaotic as hell and was responsible for the images conjuring in my head. Some of the riffs remind me of “Harnessing Ruin” era IMMOLATION and, considering that’s my favorite album from that band, I can’t think of a better compliment. Despite the technical flair, the guitar/bass riffs have a lot of memorable value to them, especially if seeing someone get turned into human pudding by a freight train is something you want to remember. “Abstract,” is one of my favorites on the album. I don’t know if this will make sense or not but the song sounds like it is “falling over” and it could end with a large amount of destruction at any moment. As always, put on a good pair of headphones, and you might not live through this one. At the 2:22 mark, the song suddenly goes completely silent before clean tones creep back in. Is this a respite from the previous moment of insanity? Or is this the final product of my brain working after it has been melted? The riffs that arrive after the break are utterly fantastic yet abysmal.

The final song, “Vultures,” is one of the more interesting ones. The beginning sees the band alternating between speed and more introspective moments. But it never feels disjointed—if anything, it feels like a roller coaster ride from hell. The solo in the last quarter of the song is weird, technical, blazing, and maddening all at the same time. That’s a good way to describe the album, too. If you can live through this tangled evisceration put to music, HIERARCHIES’ self-titled debut is a banger of an album that is technical without being pretentious and flashy. Recommended.