OBSOLETE Animate//Isolate [CD]

For a certain type of metal purist extremity is defined not by blast beats and bowel-bothering growls but by how fast a band can sand your face off with a riff that is both instantly memorable and so intricate and alien that you can’t begin to understand how to play it on a lowly human guitar. By that metric Obsolete may be that certain purist’s favorite band. Every riff here is fine-tuned for maximum cerebral carnage. Why play a normal scale in a normal way at a normal speed when you can play a bizarre upside-down bit of nightmare logic at warp 9? Somehow Obsolete is able to bang out riff after riff in this style all over their new album Animate//Isolate. Just as impressively they string them together into comprehensible structures and memorable songs–a collision of head-bangable death/thrashing goodness and advanced technicality encountered only occasionally in such predecessor bands as Sadus and demo-era Cynic. Adding in occasional splashes of black metal and avant-death dissonance Obsolete manages to craft a debut album that stands apart from the crowd without resorting to gimmicks or unlistenable experimentation. With Animate//Isolate Obsolete have put together one hell of a first salvo. Nine tracks deep and bristling with ideas and hyperactive energy this is a death/thrash album that any fan of either genre should hear.