Replicant for Tech/Extreme

Hailing from New Brunswick, New Jersey, Replicant are an American technical death metal trio operating since 2014. The group began as a quartet featuring vocalist and guitarist Michael Gonçalves (of Windfaerer), guitarist Peter Lloyd (ex-Dystrophy and occasional Windfaerer collaborator), the bassist known as TG (or Tom; of Death Fortress) and drummer Matthew Thompson (also formerly of Dystrophy). Replicant play a forward-thinking brand of dissonant death metal informed by Gorguts, Ripping Corpse, Demilich and Voivod as well as hardcore punk.

The group made their debut with 2016's Worthless Desires EP. TG left the band shortly thereafter, and Gonçalves would take over bass duties. Now a trio, Replicant released their debut album Negative Life in 2018 and a split with grindcore duo Bayht Lahm the year later. Gonçalves' Windfaerer bandmate James Applegate replaced Thompson and made his debut on the 2019 two-track EP Hypochondria of the Machine. Replicant released a song via a four-way split with like-minded bands Cryptic Shift, Inoculation and Astral Tomb on 2020's Chasm of Aeons, and the following year saw the band issue their acclaimed sophomore Malignant Reality via Transcending Obscurity Records. The album, more ambitious and ferocious than their prior work, contained cameos by Thank You Scientist violinist Ben Karas, former Dystrophy (and current Hath) guitarist Peter Brown and Tombs frontman Mike Hill.

             

Replicant have been compared to Negativa, Sunless, Ulcerate, Diskord, Burnt by the Sun, Norse and Pyrrhon.

"Negative Life" (2018)

"Malignant Reality" (2021)