Style: Technical death metal, progressive death metal, flamenco (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Beyond Creation, Necrophagist, Ne Obliviscaris
Country: Spain
Release date: 4 April 2025
In a genre like technical death metal, the sky is the limit in the context of ambition: do you want to play and sing inhumanly fast like Archspire? Maybe you want to pull your listeners backwards in time through a black hole like Alkaloid? Perhaps, in typical Nile fashion, you just want to not be ‘Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes’. Like their contemporaries, Spanish tech deathers Ash of Necrossus are no strangers to ambition—their debut, Sands of the Great Unfolding, showcased a hefty zeal in the attempt to compose a single hour-long track, but was ultimately held back by issues of song structure and leaning too heavily on genre tropes. In a grand change of pace, Ash of Necrossus have dialed back the track lengths significantly but expanded the scope of their musical palette through the introduction of flamenco on latest album, Predicated by the Maw of Time, the first chapter of a self-titled trilogy. Fool me once, shame on you, but will Ash of Necrossus’ undying ambition fool me twice?
Predicated by the Maw of Time operates on a principle of grandeur at virtually all times: aggressive, highly-polished technical death metal riffage will often give way to cinematic, larger-than-life melodies and harmonized clean-harsh verses. However, the central conceit of Predicated is the heavy use of flamenco, with tracks like “Ash II: How Far Reaches the Procession?” being almost entirely composed with frenetic acoustic guitars and lively cajón replete with ornamentation. Like any tech death band worth its salt, each track features a heavy dose of fretless bass, sometimes even leading the melody while the guitars follow suit in the background (“Woven into Calamitous Forms”, “Bipinnatus”).
Whereas First Fragment and Impureza use flamenco as a dressing to add intrigue to their tech death, Ash of Necrossus establishes it as a songwriting focus. “Ash II” is a mostly-instrumental nine-plus minute track that sits in the style across nearly its entire runtime, intertwining fretless bass with punctuated acoustic guitar chords. The fretless bass lends a ‘spacey’ feel to the flamenco, with tracks like “Bipinnatus” and “Nebula Aflame in the Soul of Icharion” creating a stunning ebb and flow of cosmic tech death intensity and acoustic contemplation akin to Iapetus’ The Body Cosmic; the closing moments of “Bipinnatus” in particular feel like being gently pulled out of a field and into the stratosphere to wander among a vivid galaxy. There are times, though, where Ash of Necrossus could use a bit of restraint in their approach: the flamenco guitar used on bite-sized epilogue “Ash V” is a little extra, furiously thrashing about before coming to a sudden and unceremonious stop. I do wish the conclusion was a bit more satisfying, as it likely is set up as a segue to the heretofore unwritten Part II, but it does detract slightly from the experience as a standalone listen. Additionally, the flamenco guitar and the rhythm guitars clash a bit and get a bit too cluttered at moments on “Unsevered”, making it difficult to parse a central through-line despite the crystal-clear production.
Lyrically, Predicated by the Maw of Time focuses on coping with the sudden death of a loved one and consequently facing one’s own mortality, telling a bittersweet story of self-exploration not unlike Dessiderium’s Keys to the Palace. Tracks like “Ash II: How Far Reaches the Procession?” and “Ash IV: Predicated by the Maw of Time” ruminate on the meaning of death and our place in the universe, betraying fears of being forgotten by the sands of time. Metaphors such as describing one’s bones as ‘a fossilized relief’ are pitted against questions of whether time will ultimately wither the narrator’s visage featureless. On “Bipinnatus”, the namesake flower is explored in depth, its inflorescence imposed against an infinitely large prairie. Here, the cosmos is indirectly described as both a vast and uncaring void and at the same time a grand tapestry that is incomplete without each of its parts; the oxymoronic nature of space as both a place of utter emptiness and stunning interconnection is not lost on Ash of Necrossus.
Predicated does not paint healing as a linear process, but as one with sharp ups and downs that follow a loose upward trend. For example, closing epic “Nebula Aflame in the Soul of Icharion” ends on a, well, Icarian note: the narrator’s grandeur established on “Unsevered” begins to show its cracks and lead to a downward spiral before the track’s end. Some metaphors across Predicated’s runtime do come off as a bit on-the-nose, however, particularly on “Unsevered” and “Ash III: An Unrelenting Lurch into Oblivion”, but given the nuanced take on the healing process as a whole, these blemishes are by and large forgivable.
In the end, it’s hard to see Predicated by the Maw of Time’s ambition as anything less than a roaring success. A healthy dose of flamenco underneath a crisp tech death base adds an undeniable freshness and depth to the sound, opting instead for a natural ebb and flow in songwriting as opposed to a towering and inscrutable behemoth. These moments of delicacy are augmented by thoughtful and contemplative lyricism that effectively conveys the narrators fears, struggles, and realizations. You’d be a fool not to check this one out.
Recommended tracks: Ash II: How Far Reaches the Procession?, Nebula Aflame in the Soul of Icharion, Bipinnatus
You may also like: Dessiderium, Iapetus, First Fragment, Impureza, Pedro Iturralde
Final verdict: 8.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
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