Hypostasis of the Archons

With the way things are going, I think the brutal death metal scene should start to acknowledge one-man BDM as an entire subgenre of its own. Well, no, not really; but almost every single one-man band I've heard take a shot at brutal death metal seemingly exists inside of its own little thought bubble, shielded from practically everything that goes on throughout the rest of the scene. It's almost like they manage to miss out on the bulk of the developments and expansions of the sound, and are content to pick up little parts of it and build off of those. Fight the Demiurge, at least in this point in their existence, are certainly no exception.

Hypostasis of the Archons is really "weird" brutal death metal, but not necessarily in a good way. The music tends to draw on a lot of different death metal vibes throughout its length, with a typical track juggling through Suffocation-inspired NYDM to full-on Cephalotripsy slams to slow, Carcass-styled goregrind grooves and just about everything in between. The end result is songs that are composed of pretty cool parts that don't fit together very well; collections of riffs instead of "songs", so to speak. This might work a bit better if every concept on display was fleshed out to the point where each song had two main concepts, but the near-constant shifting here isn't very effective. It's also worth noting that a lot of Fight the Demiurge's riffs, like a lot of other one-man BDM bands, feel strangely light-hearted and out-of-place (e.g. the opening riff in "The Chaotic Rendering of the Material Plane, which somehow almost sounds more like groove metal than death metal); they're often based in the key of C, a rather non-threatening key of music to begin with, and the melodies themselves don't do much to make them come across as any less cheery. As a result, the music almost never sinks to the primal face-crushing brutality of more uniformly slam-centric bands, the occult evil of your average OSDM band, or any other genre/scene with an influence detectable in the music.

The drums are actually executed pretty well within the music (though the triggered samples can become a bit grating at times, with the snare and cymbals in particular sounding just a bit too synthetic and unvaried for my tastes). A lot of interesting beats are thrown into the mix, with syncopated snare hits and fills keeping the rhythms captivating throughout the EP's length. A minor complaint, though is that sometimes the drumwork suffers from George Kollias syndrome and become just a bit too ostentatious, to the point where riffs are often interrupted by frequent and flashy drum fills which can become rather irritating after a while.

Vocally, however, is where Hypostasis of the Archons truly shines. Fight the Demiurge operates mostly via a low, thick gurgle, somewhere halfway between Cannibal Corpse-era Chris Barnes and Angel Ochoa. The fact that the vocals are delivered by a female frankly makes them all the more impressive, considering how well they're delivered. The vocal lines are catchy and memorable, and overall make for what is probably the highest point of this EP.

The music as a whole suffers from the thin, bedroom-ish guitar tone and the lack of a thick, defined production job, but this whole display shows quite a bit of potential. With a more refined presentation and a bit more songwriting practice (and perhaps a darker sound presented in the riffs), I could see this becoming a relatively regular listen for me. While it's not great, checking this out certainly wouldn't kill you.