Thresholds

This is a cool album in many ways. The cover art is so cool that it's worth owning for that alone. It's cool that it's an early 90s death metal album with keyboards and sci-fi themes. It has a very cool atmosphere and overall aesthetic, and has some really interesting and unique sounds thrown into the mix (crashing waves, bloops and blips). It's worth checking out for these things alone. But this album has become prototypical for me of the kind of release that catches my eye (and ear), I check out once or twice on Spotify, think is cool, but don't come back to.

And that's because the music itself, while technically impressive and interesting for the aforementioned reasons, is just not that good. There are few if any of the catchy grooves, riffs and melodies that were present on The Key. It is also not particularly brutal or overwhelming (characteristics I expect many people seek in extreme metal). It's just kind of a big mush of riffs that my brain couldn't make any sense of, and not in a good way, like how I have to allow myself time to decipher a Meshuggah or Necrophagist riff that sounds like nonsense at first but then reveals itself to have a twisted structure and logic to it. Not that the riffs on Thresholds are nonsense. They just don't seem to have much of a musical sensibility behind them besides showmanship. Which isn't bad in itself, but is not pulled of here in a way that works on its face. It doesn't matter what else an album has going for it - if the music doesn't grab me in any way, why would I listen to it?

I could see this album being thrown on in the background as a sort of evil sci-fi moodsetter (while you're...I don't know...reading the Doom novels?) but a background experience is not what I think most people want out of technical death metal. I could still recommend this album in a conversation about death metal curiosities and notably strange, interesting albums. Or for some '90s cyber-horror nostalgia. I could see how it could cater to a certain taste, especially at the time it was released. Death metal can be awfully derivative and this is at least something different. But it certainly ain't one of my favs.