Deformatory - Inversion of the unseen horizon (Album review)
About the band
Deformatory are a Canadian Technical Death Metal duo based in Ottawa, Canada formed in 2010, they have one EP and three full length albums including their most recent ‘Inversion Of The Unseen Horizon’ which came out September 3rd 2021.
Album Art by: Paul Gerrard
The Review
This album has nine tracks of pure death metal, it’s not a genre I spend a lot of time listening to but I can still appreciate it, this isn’t going to go track by track like normal but I’ll point out aspects that I think stand out in certain songs, the album is based on horror and sci-fi which are two really interesting concepts to base music on and we all know they both work together extremely well, this album was a really fun listen, the guitar solo midway through ‘Behold, The Apex Of Decay’ was really cool, the noise in the background of ‘Summoning The Cosmic Devourer’ gives the song a cool atmosphere on top of how heavy it is. The album has a story running through it and is kind of split into three chapters, chapter one (Tracks 1-3), Chapter 2 (tracks 4-6) and chapter 3 (tracks 7-9). The overall story is about entities from space called The Ce’naxors that destroys planets and are aiming to do the same to earth, this follows their last release ‘Malediction’ which followed a story too one about lucifer being a possessed angel. I love the concept of having an original story behind your album and the concept chosen of cosmic horror and world destroying entities is definitely an interesting one.
Bands logo by: Adrian Baxter
They keep to the theme really well both lyrically and with their song names, there’s another amazing guitar solo in ‘Masticated By An Infinite Shadow’ the vocals don’t really change much they’re the same low growls all throughout the album, they’re almost inhuman sounding sometimes which fits the theme of the album really well since the story presumably is being told from The Ce’naxors point of view. There’s a little bit of talking in ‘Deciphering The Archetype’ which I couldn’t make out but I assume is story related. ‘Impaled Upon The Carrionspire’ starts out with a small acoustic sounding bit and some background noise before the rest of the instruments kick in and return to the Death metal sound we’ve become so used to over the album. There’s another spoken bit in this song, it sounds like someone talking about dying and there’s what sounds like shouting around three minutes in. This is supposed to be around the climax of the story so things are a little more hectic and the music getting louder and heavier really demonstrates that. ‘Beyond The Abhorrence’ is the last song and the end of the story and it’s probably the heaviest song on the album, this is one of the songs where the vocals come off a little more inhuman at least to me, there’s a little talking bit midway through, the song ends quite abruptly as well. Overall this was interesting
Photo credit unknown
Conclusion
As stated previously, overall it’s an interesting listen, the story is cool, the instrumentals and vocals are well done and well put together, the added sounds and spoken bits throughout add to the atmosphere and the story, there’s probably a lot I missed and if I did I’m sure the death metal community will tell me but as someone who doesn’t listen to a lot of that sort of stuff it was definitely fun to listen to and I’d give it another go, if you’re already a huge technical death metal or death metal fan Deformatory should be on your playlist.
Music and social media
You can check the band out on spotify, Bandcamp and their social medias, you can also see an interview I did with one of the members