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SPECIES
To Find Deliverance

Awakening (2022)
Rating: 8/10

Just behold that cover art! This debut full-length opus from Polish thrashers Species comes wrapped up like some mid-80s Euro-metal heap. It’s ethereal, wispy and strange in appearance, yet the sound comes ripping across the pastoral horizon with a bewildering cutting edge that flashes with, at times, jazzy progression and complexity… and I’m all the better for it.

This is some seriously sneering tech-thrash out of Warsaw. Piotr Drobina brings a fair set of pipes alongside his jarring bass skills, Michał Kępka’s axe work is fierce, cold and wonderfully executed, while the drums of Przemysław Hampelski snap like fresh bones.

My only issue here though is that the record lacks weight and feels a tad thin on the ground, rather like one of those pallid yet slightly under-produced Germanic 80s gems where you crave for each instrument to slap you hard. Even so, as debut albums go it’s interesting to hear such technicality and diversity without being utterly bamboozled to the point of migraine.

Of the eight cuts on offer it’s ‘Parasite’, ‘The Moment Of Envy’ and ‘Malfunction’ that are the most instant to me. But whichever track you zone in on you’ll be rewarded with some superb examples of meandering thrash, whereby a measured approach seems key throughout to the point that even when speed is applied it’s never scathing.

‘Malfunction’, although not funky, does, like a lot of the tracks, bring the clanking bass to the fore, but it’s never jolting like, say, classic Voivod. Meanwhile, ‘Ex Machina’ provides a killer hook, but again there’s that techy chug hinting at that early 90s sort of multiplicity streaked with scratchy vocal aesthetics.

Strangely, To Find Deliverance remains fluid in its technicality, so tunes such as ‘Falls The Tower’ remain catchy rather than niggly which is always my concern when I hear methodological thrash. At times the album does feel a tad mechanical, but again I just think that’s down to the lack of meat on the bones. But hey, if this had been released on, say, Noise Records back in 1991 I would have lapped it up.

Certainly a band to keep a beady eye on, Species provides a welcome respite from the beer-guzzling Ed Repka-art obsessed crews doing the rounds at the moment.

Neil Arnold

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