Disembodied Tyrant – The Tower: Part One

When I first heard Disembodied Tyrant, I was very impressed. Their split EP, “The Poetic Edda“, with Synestia was some of the most surprising deathcore I’ve heard in years, with a spectacular sound, a clever and original mix of symphonic elements and some insane technical skills. And it is the reason why I came back to listen to their latest, “The Tower: Part One“. But does it live up to the hype?

Well, in some ways it does. In others, it’s a bit of a let-down for me. The insanely explosive production is still there. The songs are still fast, brutal, epic and unpredictable, and it still escapes the generic deathcore structures. Those are all positives. However, the symphonic elements have been reduced. The orchestral layers now only serve as background. There are no more moments of classical music, which gives it a more standard evil deathcore atmosphere. It feels a lot more experimental though. The writing is extremely disjointed, with counterintuitive juxtapositions of fast sections, slow beat-down moments and rhythmically volatile progressive sections. And I can give credit to that approach, focused of compositional chaos, especially when the intended vibe is insanity, which I’m willing to assume is the case with this EP. But I can’t say it’s entirely my cup of tea. It makes the songs quite straining to listen to, and while all the shock elements are entertaining on first listen, the become a bit unnecessary after repeated spins.

Technically, the music is once again, spectacular. The riffs are very fast and creative, the drum blasting is ridiculous, and their transition game is on point. The swift cuts where everything goes silent are also quite entertaining. And my favourite part must be the guitar leads on ‘Aberrant Waltz’ and ‘Malphasian’. Vocalist Blake Mullens is also an absolute beast with his ability to sound as inhuman as possible. His speed of shooting out syllables is also quite impressive, although his pronunciation is quite blurry… then again, this is deathcore, so I suppose filth is a higher priority than clarity on the vocals.

Disembodied Tyrant – Aberrant Waltz

So they score big on originality, production, shock factor and technical skill. But I feel this release suffers a lot from the disjointed songwriting and the excessive use of sound effects. There are all sorts of weird screeches, alarm sounds, clicky percussion effects (‘Icarian’) and moments of vocal processing or effects that take away from the actual music for me. Especially on ‘Malphasian’, I feel like most of the atmosphere is built through sound design more so than the musical elements themselves, and there’s something about that that feels too artificial. I’m not one to claim that music should always be “raw” or that modern production and effects are a problem, but after a certain point, I start feeling like I’m listening to a sensory overload rather than a song, and I feel like the third track ‘Malphasian’, is pushing that boundary.

As far as I’m concerned, Disembodied Tyrant remains a powerful voice in deathcore, and I’m still curious where they go from here. “The Tower: Part One” is insanely creative and technically challenging. But a release that scores higher in shock value than in enjoyable songwriting, isn’t one that I’ll be coming back to a lot.

Track List:

1. 1. Icarian (04:42)
   2. Aberrant Waltz (04:59)
   3. Malphasian (05:08)

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