Rats, and I was just learning some basic arpeggios recently and thought I was going to take on the world when I got this album for reviewing. I’m stoked, I cannot even begin to phantom how you can create and play music like this.

German Progressive Death Metallers NECROPHAGIST are one of those bands who like to make things challenging for themselves and their listeners, this album has one heck of a skilled performance, if not the best I’ve heard in the Death Metal genre and that’s saying a lot considering the fact that I’m a big fan of this style which houses awesome bands like CYNIC, CRYPTOPSY, THE FORSAKEN and others.

Institutionalised Death Metal meets overflowing Progressive Metal, sounds nice doesn’t it? The guys clearly want to stay within a number of genres, they play Progressive Death Metal and stick to that, a few slow breakdowns and nothing else, must be pretty exhausting to play live.

Instrumentally, “Epitaph” is beyond perfect if anything, precision, coordination, arrangement, everything, if machines were to play Metal music in say 3034 it would have sounded something like this since I doubt an entity without a conscience would play sweet pop tunes.

Songs are cryptic in the sense that instrumentally there’s a lot going on, many tempo changes and odd time signatures on every player in the band, calculated song writing all the way, I feel like being back in school trying to solve equations. Riffs are of high-level composing scales with tons of rhythmic dissonances and lots of splintering artificial harmonics. It’s all done so well, did they play everything once and just copy and paste the repeated passages or do they have an extra set of fingers doing all hyper technical stuff? I don’t know which one to believe.

The low growling takes away some of the overall sophistication, they could’ve tried to mix them with more variety as everything else on this record spirals out of control (because of huge variation in musical delivery). Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t ruin anything, they fit with the music and that’s just as good in my opinion. If you listen carefully and concentrate hard enough on the melodic elements and different solo styles you should find a bit of classical music being used in a more vibrant and heavily distorted way hehe.

How often do you hear a Death Metal album that doesn’t have an obscure edge? There are some of course and “Epitaph” is one of them. It’s actually fun to listen to the album, the atmosphere is technical, uncompromising and intricate, anything but emotive, it’s the type of album that holds those introspective thoughts at bay.

The first spins made me dizzy, writing basic notes on a piece of paper seemed like a lost cause but after repetitive walkthroughs I really can say that this is some of the best executed Finger Surfing Progressive Death Metal I’ve stumbled upon, damn fine treatment for the ears!!! (Online October 29, 2004)