Rating: 9.0

Country: USA

Release Date: 2004

Record Label: Willowtip

Track list:
1. Ingrained
2. Fractured [MP3]
3. Perpetuate Catatonia
4. Machines
5. Icon of Malice
6. Reins of Humanity
7. The Scourge Trial
8. Refusal Prelude

Total playing time: 29:40

Band Website: Capharnaum

Capharnaum - Fractured

Matt Heafy - Vocals
Jason Suecof - Guitar, Vocals
Daniel Mongrain - Guitar
Jordan Suecof - Drums
Mike Poggione - Bass

Appropriately this album begins with filtered spidery frettings under a ringing alarm of a dissonant guitar chord. "Pay attention and stay alert" is the message and ignore it at your peril. Capharnaum are much more than an original concoction of US technical death metal. The formula is tweaked at a fundamental level - the riff.  

Taking a few rules (and borrowing the main man) from Martyr's code of practice and injecting it with further schizophrenia has produced a slab of metal that inhabits the grain boundaries rather than the crystalline core. Interweaved layers and frantic criss-crossing scales in the vein of Nocturnus are intensified to the point of being almost unable to savour them, but there is the simultaneous illusion that insects are scurrying all over you (evident in the murky, jittery "Perpetuate Catatonia" and "Icon of Malice"). Just as you start feeling uncomfortable and twitchy there are luxuriant majestic breaks that allow breath to be drawn and if the mood is right you will be treated to some memorable scimitar-like precision thrash under immaculate and rich leads before spiralling into the belly of the metal-jazz beast.  

The brothers Suecof are capable of anything and the drumming is as fresh and manic as the guitar playing. The honesty of the production is commendable - crisp, clear, balanced and broad, with just enough brutality to make those bludgeoning dirges extra filthy.  

There are only one or two riffs that tag each song, usually enclosing the malevolent and rapid technicality within a thematic frame. Always menacing, always challenging, but at not much more than twenty-five minutes (once the unnecessary freeform jam outro is dismissed) it leaves you wanting more. Next time let us have a proper ending guys; a sense of culmination and closure would have cemented this album as a masterwork.

April 1st, 2005