2022 will surely mark another great year for the extreme metal community and this time around, Schizophrenia is a upcoming extreme metal artist hailing all the way from Belgium to create a distinctive, relentless and bursting albums and with Recollections Of The Insane released on Redefining Darkness Records, this is pretty much what you normally expect out of all killer no filler style of death metal with sprinkle amounts of melodic black and old school death metal signatures. Musically, Schizophrenia’s sound is a mixed bag of having a dynamic, compulsive, contemporary and almost thrashy sort of sound as the band’s influences range anywhere from Demolition Hammer, Sepultura, Slayer, Pestilence, Dissection and Morbid Angel since their compositions bring out a melodic black metal passage while maintaining elements of old school death metal and thrash metal which to me I love when a band is afraid of no boundaries and experiment different types of musical varieties.
Stylistically, Schizophrenia’s take for extreme metal may not seem to be the most original or unique band to ever step foot in the realms of extreme music but for what it is, this album contains brutality, heaviness, darkened arrangements and a thrashy aesthetic tonality brings out such quality over quantity in which this case there’s many pinpoints I like to observe while listening to this album. Songs like Inside The Wall Of Madness, Monolith and Divine Immolation have these accessible, progressive and very melodically driven sort of soundscapes as the vocals bring out a chaotic, commendable and apocalyptic approach reminding me a Morbid Angel influence from the howling screams and registered screams to the thrash metal drumming patterns sounding furiously heavy and keeps the mid tempo sections afloat while the bass tone gives it a nice crunch and flavor balancing out the overall aesthetics to give a sense of emotion and the guitars bring a melodic black metal passage while there’s some moments on the record I noticed they went above and beyond to have a groove like arrangements in the song Souls Of Retribution giving the album a much more energetic presence and the progression from these musicians surely wanted to create a distinctive style and sound to make the listener traveling back to the late 80s and mid 90s of extreme metal. Recollections Of The Insane is a fresh interpretation on how to perfectly craft the most symbolic, melodic, blackened and thrashy styled records and this should be on everyone’s radar as one of the most compromising albums of 2022.
Overall Score: 9.0/10
Review by Jake Butler
