French death metal band Nephren-Ka are back and have resurrected themselves into the French extreme music underground and created a wonderful album start to finish with the third full-length album From Agony To Transcendence and is released on Dolorem Records. This is basically if you took Black Seeds Of Vengeance era from technical death metal band Nile with more depth and additional musical influences as their aspects from the blinding guitar riffage, characterized touches of extreme musicality and wrapping their minds into a production that’s not only improved compared to the past couple albums but this is more diverse, matured, heavier and overall extremely engaging.
They’ve once again pulled their brutal assaults aside and cultivated the instrumentation to hear such sci-fi themed explorations, whirlwinds of chaotic drumming and a hugely satisfied enjoyable album that you’ll hear this year. Musically, their structures almost brings out a Origin-esque as the vocals are not only similar but the song variations do standout to one another as the mixing, production and musicianship are absolutely fantastic. They’ve not only brought death metal to a whole new level but this album is pure aggression written all over it and if you are wanting some indistinguishable, frantic, and adrenaline then this album will surely bring extreme metal fans on their feet to hear an upcoming French band.
Songs such as Conspiracy for the Fall of the Atreides and the Reclaim of the Golden Lion’s Throne, L’agonie de l’Épice and Sea of Sand have aggressive drumming patterns and a instrumentation work so visceral the album does a phenomenal job rotating signatures to be complexed and diversified. But its not until the secondary half of this album when it starts to dive into a interesting, slamming and sprinkled compositions that really reminded me a lot of Origin meets Hideous Divinity when these French musicians ultimately created massive destructive sequences that contributed a positive outcome to move progression elements and a stylistic barrier of intricate compositions have never sounded so fierce. From Agony To Transcendence is another impressive and improvement album which comprehends the intelligence, technicality, brutality and progression making the record shine for many years to come.
Overall Score: 9.0/10
Review by Jake Butler
