Style: Tech Death (instrumental)
Review by: Evan
Country: United States
Release date: May 21st, 2021
When you see a band called something like Gn0sis (especially with an album cover like this), you know it’s a tech death band. What is more surprising in this case, and especially so if you hear the music, is that Gn0sis is a one man project. Shocking, a one man project paying something other than weird black metal. In fact, Pro Terra is quite the opposite of the one man black metal project’s ethos: it is extremely technical, clean, and polished, perhaps to a fault.
“Clean” should give you an idea of the style of tech death that Gn0sis plays. Gn0sis fits clearly into the modern tech death paradigm, where every riff might as well be a solo and the guitar tone almost makes you almost forget it is death metal to begin with. Gn0sis differentiates themselves with a decent amount of dynamics, reportedly inspired by film scores. Also, as mentioned, Gn0sis is wholly instrumental.
The first thing that stands out about the performance on this album is that while it is heavily guitar driven, the other instrumental parts mesh quite well together, and with the guitars. It is unclear what Roger Trivinos did for the other instruments (i.e are the drums tracked or did he play them), but the synchronization, and compositional strength of drums and bass is impressive either way. Moreover, the tracks with dynamics are exceptionally well written, and that epic “film soundtrack” feel is truly present on the last track, “Anthropause.”
All this being said, Pro Terra still suffers from many of the common pitfalls of prog, and specifically tech death. A lot of the riffing, especially in the first half of the album, is rather unmemorable due to both its lack of bite and overindulgence of technicality. Moreover, even though the riffs sound quite similar to one another, they feel disjointed because each track never quite settles on a riff or motif. The lack of vocals makes this problem even more noticeable than it is in other tech death groups.
Ultimately, while Gn0sis does little to progress tech death, or even to attempt to overcome its most frequent pitfalls, it is still, like most of its genre contemporaries, an enjoyable, impressive, and energetic release. “Anthropause” shows some serious promise, however, and shows a clear direction in which Gn0sis can progress.
Recommended tracks: Pro Terra, Eons of Truculence, Anthropause
Recommended for fans of: The Faceless, Martyr, Beyond Creation
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
Gn0sis is:
– Roger Trivinos (everything)
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