review: Atræ Bilis -- death metal from Canada

Atræ Bilis

Divinihility

Transcending Obscurity Records

14 August 2020

What a smart decision to have a short 22-minute recording. All fun, all muscle, no fat, and we get to see what they do in a limited amount of time. They sport a rumbling bass guitar sound for this contemporary/new school death. As far as one can tell on this recording, they cook up some sick styles in the big kettle and make their own nasty soup of death. What happens is that grooving, slamming brutality meets up with some tech, and comes up with all types of brutal, bubbling, mud pig death of the stomping kind.

The most attractive aspect of the recording is the variety. They use the piggish elements of slam or brutal death but avoid making it an orthodox formula. They have the frenzy of tech-death but it is not the only style on offer. They have the groove components, but they also have the riffs to bypass the boring sounds of groove metal when that’s all that there is. It doesn’t take long to notice the slower death moving to blasting, then doing some breakdowns, and more, and it’s simply a nice combination of these styles working well. The fact that the recording is not 97 minutes certainly makes it easier for us non-musicians to get onboard with the growling, snarling, barking, screaming, blasting, breakdowns and everything else.

Divinihility (Death Metal) by ATRÆ BILIS (Canada)