Systems

Listening to the band’s recently unleashed full-length debut, their only contribution to the official releases’ metal roster so far, I can’t help but feel a bit sad about the way their career developed, having started in the early-90’s, producing an outstanding debut demo (the one reviewed here), and then falling into mediocrity with the sloppily produced and fairly unimpressive second outing, and the full-length where timid bouts of spastic technicality try to make their way through the thick bashing noisy, quite abrasive as well, wall of modernized death metallisms.

Yeah, sad indeed cause once upon a time things did seem promising; big time at that as this a bit over half an hour of original, genuinely captivating technical death metal histrionics here boded fortune and glory, even during the very uncertain mid-90’s.

So these systems are built around a classic/modern hybridization as the latter is reflected in a more modernized, more sterile guitar sound, nothing groovy or aggro under any form, with “Your Life” winking at Coroner’s “Metamorphosis” from “Mental Vortex” with its stunning hygienic, clockwork precision; creepy mid-tempo configurations embalm the listener with delightful peaceful lyrical breaks served on regular intervals. Meticulously arranged stuff the band even making short hecticers like “It Stinks from Your Mouth” sound fairly intriguing, not to mention more complex progressive walkabouts like “Incomplete Imitations of Humanity” where a spacey atmospheric miasma fights with steel intricate riffs, the latter tied in jumpy jazz-like knots ala Atheist and Cynic. Some headbanging immediacy can still be come across amongst the elaborate rifforamas, largely provided on “The Needle” which pricks the setting with dizzying tempo changes and vociferous bass inclusions, both gimmicks featured on “Systems of Worms” as well, an entertainment of a slightly different kind with an increased number of balladic digressions which form a spell-binding symbiosis with the dazzling technical skirmishes, all these lofty exploits silenced by the short serene all-instrumental etude “For You”.

It’s all for you, yes, and has been delivered in a most splendid manner the guys playing around with various influences, eventually succeeding in producing a more individual, less ordinary effort, a really fine amalgamation of surging aggression and minimalistic, anti-climactic slowdowns the resultant tussle greatly enhanced by the very clear sound quality. The vocalist gives his share with a not very vociferous throaty, semi-growling baritone obviously not feeling very comfortable with the higher notes thus adhering to them only when absolutely necessary. The overall layout is more parsimonious and less exuberant than the one of the other Slovakian death metal behemoth at the time, Dissonance’s “Look to Forget”, and more patiently woven than the soundscapes of the guys’ other current occupation Contempt (three full-lengths so far) where the style is much closer to the dazzling brutality movement (Cryptopsy, Suffocation, etc.).

The systems have been experiencing a few glitches along the way recently; the reunion is yet to live up to the higher standards from the beginning… still, I don’t feel worried about the band’s future that much; cause I know that you can easily stitch a glitch with a tightly woven technical riff-knot.