Infinity Echoes

I was introduced to Devius through a friend of mine. He’s an avid fan of technical death metal and he’s always telling me to listen to this or this other band, but most of the times I can’t seem to get into them, as they end up being another technical band for the sake of it, something like Beyond Creation or Archspire for example. And while some of them may have some material worth of my listening time, most of them not. So I wasn’t really sure when he told me about this band Devius, but anyway I proceeded to get their two EPs to give them a few spins, and I have to say that I was quite pleased with the results.

On Infinity Echoes, Devius aim for a nice kind of progressive death metal. The band truly has talented musicians and their songs are very intricate, with complicated and acrobatic riffs everywhere, but what I liked the most is that they’re not a technical band for the hell of it. Rather, their skills and technicality are put to good use and the band is constantly creating interesting atmospheres with several resources. The leads are constantly building nice instrumental passages, and when not, they’re decorating the verses with interesting melodies. The music is mostly kept at a mid pace, with some specific exceptions, and there are zero blast beats to be found, which allow the band to concentrate in the dissonant melodies and grooves that constitute the core of their music.

The opening instrumental sets the tone for the rest of the EP, with a clean guitar solo that plays over a mellow synth for mere seconds. The five remaining tracks exhibit a wide array of influences that range from Meshuggah to Opeth and Behemoth, so there’s a lot to process here. ‘Relatevely Relative’ kicks off with a very Meshuggah-like groove, while ‘The Inner Procession’ features beautiful middle-eastern acoustic passages and melodies; for instance, check the solo that pops up at around 2:50, truly beautiful. ‘Theory of Murder’ is another lovely track (yeah it’s weird to use such an adjective to describe a death metal song) but its soft jazzy grooves and exquisite melodies are hard to go over. Pidone’s vocals are pretty good too, he reminds me of David Vincent in his Altars of Madness times.

I was a bit skeptical about Devius before hearing them, as I was afraid they’d be another noodlecore band, but fortunately they surprised me. Infinity Echoes shows a band that is not afraid to experiment with diverse musical nuances, acoustic guitars, exotic scales, jazzy grooves or weird time signatures, and it all sounds quite professional for being their debut EP. I still have to catch up with their other two releases to see how the band has evolved, but I’m pretty sure that they won’t let me down.