INITIATION

A live album from this Australian death metal band I do not know that much about.

I have so far only been listening to their first two albums. Most of the stuff on this live album is from their other studio albums though.

A live gig is always a compromise between renditions of the studio material and the abilities of the musicians. There is things from studio you cannot do live. That's due to the limits of the musicians, the technology or simply that the studio material is too esoteric to be performed live. You soften up, in other words.

Psycroptic is supposed to be an ultra-technical death metal band. Although the songs here is very competently delivered, the supposed uber-technicality is not present here. What remains is a very good death metal live album. But it is pretty standard in the technicallity department. Their supposed best songs are included here and the sound is very good too. There is a couple of comfort breaks here which means this is not a flowing live album. That is my biggest problem with it. But this is a good death metal album which includes everything a death metal fan want and deserve. No less; no more.

3 stars

For the first time I went to a death metal festival and Psycroptic was on the setlist. Therefor I had listened several times to this liveperformance, because it was one of the few bands I'd liked to listen from beginning till end. Psycroptic plays highly technical deathmetal. One of the great things of Psycroptic is that their technical styl is absolutely more prominent then speed or brutal power, which is far more often seen in the death metal genre. In fact, on stage they didn't seem agressive, but seriously playing their music as if they were just progressive musicians accidently playing death metal.

This liverecord gives a good interpretation how they sound live: they play tight and are convincing. There are constantly new ideas coming and the riffs are full of small melodic lines. The instruments are good dinstinquishable and especially the guitarplaying is very interesting with many short melodies in the mid- and highpitch spectrum. Therefor this is not such a dark experience. This music in constantly interesting, because of the litle repeating of the riffs. The riffs themselves are of high quality.

In many occasions I do prefer grunting/growling instead of clean vocals within the metal genre, because in my opinion metal may be a heavy experience. The grunting is quiet good here with some low growls here and there and soms shouts on other occasions.

This liveperformance of Psycroptic is highly recommended for fans of metal with a highly technical approach.