Cronaxia - "Collapsing the Outer Structure" (Lusitanian Music, 2018)

Band: Cronaxia
Title: Collapsing the Outer Structure
Genre: Technical Death Metal
Time: 31.26 min
Release Date: 7th September 2018
Rating: 74/100













Fuck, the promotion agency Imperative PR is sending me a lot of albums for years, and only today I decided to review one of them! Precisely, I chose to review the debut album of a band from Lisbon, Portugal, whose story is a true anthem to the perseverance. In fact, Cronaxia was founded even in 1997 but, in eternal search for the right members to play their insane music and struggling with many line-up changes, they seriously started to write a full-lenght album only in 2010 after publishing an EP three years before. Despite this will to give life to this album, Cronaxia started to record it only in 2015 with a line-up that consist of three stable members (comprising the co-founder and guitarist Filipe) and two session musicians as well (that are the hyper-active drummer Rolando Barros, and the bassist Alexandre Ribeiro, both from the historical death/grind band Grog). And finally, that album became reality under the title of "Collapsing the Outer Structure", that has been released by the Portuguese label Lusitanian Music.

By listening to "Collapsing...", I understand why Cronaxia managed to release it only now. In fact, its 8 songs shows a death metal that is insanely violent since it is an impressive non-stop slaughter full of ultra-fast tempos. But what is more impressive is that the drummer is able to reach "impossible" speeds, as already shown starting from the titletrack, that opens the album at the maximum brutality. And you know that this 'zine is always in obsessive search for the most brutal bands all over the world!

But, despite the classic old-school standards of this infamous 'zine, the approach followed by Cronaxia is strongly modern and technical. This means that you must expect to listen to songs with labyrinthine and hysterical structures, and demented and surgical riffs played at the speed of light, so the immense brutality of this kind of death metal is still more fukken impressive! But the notes played by the two guitarplayers are so much that here there are no guitar solos while the lead guitar riffs are very few. In addition, the vocals by Sérgio are the simpliest feature within Cronaxia's sound considering that they are essentially low growls with very few screams.

Speaking about my favorite songs of the album, I must anticipate that they mostly belongs to the second part of the album, which is best than its first part. So, as first song, I have to mention "The Core Condition", maybe the most special number since it has a structure in crescendo starting from mid-tempos to more demented moments, and contains even some melodies. Secondly, there is "Continuous Signal", that has an impressive ultra-brutal restart after a strangely long break. Thirdly, "Plasmatech", whose final moments are so manic in terms of speed that you've got the impression that this song must be collapsing inwards. And, as last track, I mention the closing "Tangential Threshold", that miracolously contains more reflexive passages (also with arpeggios) throughout its 6 minutes of lenght, which make it the longest number in the list.

Ok, all this is impressive, truly fukken impressive but now it's time to express some doubts of mine about this album. In primis, there is need to say that I don't like very much the vocals because they are so simple to be, in practice, in the background since the listeners focus their attentions to other elements in the songs, so I think that the vocals could be more various. In secundis, I suggest to the band to play some guitar solos in order to make deeper their assault. And, as final consideration, their music seem sometimes to be too cold, a mere exercise in extreme speed and technicality without offering a really wicked atmosphere (but this lack of atmosphere is typical for many bands with a modern approach, and it's also for this that I prefer the old-school approach). This means that more slower tempos and/or guitar solos are welcome to increase the atmospheric skills of the songs written by Cronaxia.

Fortunately, all this doesn't ruins the good quality of "Collapsing the Outer Structure". This because it is characterized by a nice variety and, especially, by a brutality so tremendous to be very rare to find in other bands, also since it is mixed with impressive technical skills. But, at this point, I suggest to you potential listeners to listen to "Collapsing..." again and again in order to comprehend it in its entirety. So, this album shows that the Portuguese extreme metalheads aren't only good in lo-fi black metal but also in something close to very technical bands like Psycroptic, Necrophagist or Origin. But now sorry if I said so many times the word "impressive" but, FUCK, I believe that "impressive" is the perfect word to describe the insane technical death metal of Cronaxia!

Tracklist:

1 - Collapsing the Outer Structure
2 - Logarithmic Cavitation
3 - The Core Condition
4 - Dimension Ratio
5 - Continuous Signal
6 - Embryonic Reanimation
7 - Plasmatech
8 - Tangential Threshold

Line-up:

Sérgio - vocals
Filipe - guitars/vocals
Renato - guitars/vocals
Alexandre Ribeiro (session) - bass
Rolando Barros - drums

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/Cronaxia-180129088709743/
BandCamp: https://cronaxia.bandcamp.com/
Lusitanian Music: http://www.lusitanianmusic.com/