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CATALYST
A Different Painting For A New World

Non Serviam (2022)
Rating: 8.5/10

I could tell by the cover artwork alone that this was going to be a technical death metal offering. This second full-length outing from French posse Catalyst delivers everything you’d want and expect from a tech’ death album; a slap in the face bass, blast beat flurries, and of course some staggering guitar work, all coming with hints of Eastern influence. The end result is a barrage of breakneck speed fused with abrasive, jarring juxtapositions and wondrous melody.

These are not the sort of albums you can review after playing just once, and this took several sittings before I could even begin to untangle the ferocity from the melodious. However, there’s a lot of variety here to keep you guessing and when coupled with the dual-vocal barrages I’m rather impressed.

While there is a strong sense of the modern with Catalyst, they also effortlessly bridge the gap between old school nuances too. But the album still reveals itself like a complex tapestry of delights, made all the more accessible by the constant dips into the harmonious. The way this quartet drifts from atmospheric and cinematic segments to furious torrents of hostility is to be admired, but whichever path they choose there’s always an intricacy and interest.

‘To Unleash Thy Heinous Fate’ pretty much sums up the majesty and creativity these serious folk have to offer. There’s a serenity in such diversity, and there’s an organic feel too in spite of the crisp production and the clearer vocal echoes which I thought would irritate me initially. But everything about this record just washes over you like a shower flitting between varying temperatures, and yet you require each temperature to appreciate the next.

At their most aggressive you’ll hear a track such as ‘The Last Warning’ with its tag-team of snappy vocal yapping and deeper bellowing, but then you are swept up in the majestic and bombastic tirades of ‘Behold Thy Purification’ which shifts between belligerence and beauty, striking a perfect balance of soaring vocals yet hammering percussion.

‘Worms And Locusts’ is equally rampant and brutal, where the leads squirm at ridiculous pace within the mesh and those drum remain at full throttle throughout. But as the likes of ‘Arise Of The Anathema’, ‘Paragon Of Devastation’ and ‘The Catalyst’s End’ perform colossal flips one can only marvel at such torrential textures, and by the time the title track halts in its contorting my brain is truly frazzled and warped by such exquisite talent. I’m on the 11th listen as I write this and it remains as fresh and as invigorating as the first.

A bewildering array of talent is on offer here. Jules Kicka (vocals and guitar), Florian Iochem (guitar), Jefferson Brand (bass) and Paul Loup (drums, since replaced by Stéphane Petit) have created a masterpiece of modern technical death metal that doesn’t necessarily exist to befuddle the listener, but its myriad of barrages act as wonderfully orchestrated examples of how brutality can be expressed.

Neil Arnold

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