One of the most highly anticipated releases in technical death metal, Canada’s First Fragment are finally back after five long years and have made a brand new full-length album titled Gloire Éternelle which is the sophomore offering releasing through Unique Leader Records. After the success of 2016’s Dasein, Gloire Éternelle is everything you dreamed of from their frantic guitar riffs, intense bass work, and astonishing instrumental leads. Not only this is a massive improvement musically and stylistically speaking, this is the most enjoyable albums I’ve heard coming out of the technical death metal scene in quite sometime. Describing the songs, progression, and chemistry work from this Canadian extreme metal outfit is simply put, a fresh and exciting experience to listen to.
Musically, First Fragment’s ability focuses on compulsive, structured, and constituent components which makes the lyrical content absolutely magnificent from start to finish. Just when you get to hear tracks such as Ataraxie, Pantheum and Solus these musicians incorporate Neo-classical guitars, European-style keyboard and piano sections, and distorted spoken words of the lyrics are some of the finest examples to showcase these Canadians provide quality over quantity to not only introduce their first ever debut full-length album but they’ve taken many inspirations for technical death metal are very well deserved for their own essential craft. One of the best moments upon hearing this release is the amount of intelligence and organic musical frequencies.
Gloire Éternelle is an album that promises to deliver mature, melodic, and malevolent displays of beautiful levels from the technical department as the album dives into a established, polished, and incredible replay value. These are some of the main reasons I enjoyed Gloire Éternelle beginning to end. Gloire Éternelle is incredibly produced, well written, entertaining and dynamic and definitely recommended for technical death metal fans who enjoy a creative, unique and captivating album that build a foundation to make the genre innovative and naturalistic.
Overall Score: 9.5/10
Review by Jake Butler
