As many bands within the technical and progressive death metal scene expands, Aethereus is proudly to be from my hometown in Washington state and surely one of the many bands through The Artisan Era to keep an eye on because this new album Leiden is one of the most exhilarating, crafted and astonishing albums I’ve heard coming from this band. After the 2018 debut of Absentia, This album introduces some jazz fusion elements that absorbs a beautiful contrasting articulation from the complex rhythmical guitars, backed up audible bass, clear singing and intense melodies with heavy balls to the wall riffage are astonishing.
The instrumentals are dynamic and shows great representation of its entirety to provide technicality and overall heaviness with complexity all around. Even on certain tracks have a strong Obscura and Fractal Universe influence more noticeably on songs such as Shrouded in Kaleidoscopic Skin, Son of a Nameless Father and Endless Cycle of Rebirth are very fast paced, guitar driven and particularly showcases the matured songwriting which absolutely blew my mind giving the record consecutive listens. Upon the benefiting triggered double bass drumming and shuffled multilingual styles of music, this record has both naturally and atmospherically speaking written all over the place to give insane groove, funk sections and technique bass work gives a hefty progressive metal outcome for the wonderful beastly elements.
Between the abstracts of contrary, beautiful compositions, phenomenal melodies and top notch overlapping patterns, none of these songs feel predictable and the extensive diversity brought to lesser hands creating musical epitaphs to the band’s crafted essential at best. But to top all things off, if you want your death metal technical, progressive and atmospheric at times with rightful amounts of technical death and jazz fusion incorporates with death growls, angulation aggressive propositions that pummels a esoteric waltzing rhythms and fairly complex instrumentals, Leiden has the right balance of progressive and technical death metal that should not be slept on and truly a contender for favorite albums of 2022.
Overall Score: 9.5/10
Review by Jake Butler
