Style: progressive death metal, melodic death metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Black Crown Initiate, Slugdge, Gojira, Opeth, Warforged
Country: Finland
Release date: 9 January 2026

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Progressive death metal is a genre defined as much by excess as it is by ambition, and unfortunately for many bands, the two are difficult to balance. When the mixture works, the result is immersive and towering, but when it fails, even the most impressive musicianship melts into an exhausting sprawl. Six years after the release of their last full length and three years after Restoration’s first single, Denominate sit poised atop that razor’s edge. Will Restoration prove itself an album overflowing with ideas and the competence to back them up, or will it struggle to rein in its own momentum?

I’ll be honest. The type of progressive death metal that Denominate employ on Restoration is exactly the style of music I tend to fall in love with. The sprawling compositions, the meaty mid-tempo riffs, and the just-rare-enough proggisms ensure that Restoration delivers the exact right ratio of heaviness and headiness. From the wide-open, balls-out ripper of a riff that opens the album on “The Loathe Process” to the off-kilter offerings of “Liminal” and the Gojira-esque grandeur of “The Cistern,” Restoration is an album carried primarily by its riffs. While the average riff sounds a bit like Opeth if Mikael Åkerfeldt were into downtuning extended range guitars as much as he was into prog rock, flashes of dissodeath, djent, and black metal also cut through, giving the entire album a strong sense of melodicism and a steady forward momentum despite each track adopting the same medium tempo.

A riff can only reach such heights if a strong rhythm section is there to support it, and thankfully, Denominate have that more than covered. Delivering subtle ghost notes and tasty linear grooves just as often as they do heavy double bass and blast beats, the drums on Restoration work in tandem with the pleasantly audible bass to deliver the heft necessary to support such gaping riffage. Still, I found the rhythm section highlights to be the softer moments on the album, like during the Opethian acoustic jam on “Liminal” or during the unsettling Warforged-esque grooves on “Restoration.” And it was these softer sections that allowed the album to justify the extended song lengths. That said, Restoration’s compositional ambition is both its greatest strength and the source of its most noticeable friction.

Riffs return and evolve atop ever-shifting drum patterns, restrained leads soar atop bellowing vocals clean and harsh alike, and everything starts to blend into one homogenous emotional blur in my mind. To Denominate’s credit, they do the climactic stuff incredibly well; I am consistently reminded of the closing passages from bands like Ne Obliviscaris. But other than the occasional acoustic reveries I outlined earlier, the band seems to be stuck in the “epic” gear. Across one song, the sound works, but used across the six lengthy tracks that comprise Restoration, the style grows a bit fatiguing. This issue is exacerbated by the rather clunky intertrack transitions, where quick fades to silence interrupt my immersion in the album’s flow and make the whole thing feel like a playlist rather than an artpiece.

Beyond the structural woes, Restoration has a few other issues I am pained to see from a band of such competence. For one, the cleans are simply not up to par with the instrumentals or harsh vocals. Coming across as oddly grungy, they often mirror the growls, providing no real melodic intrigue of their own, and when they do venture beyond the cover of the harshes, they feel thin and amateurish. While the same could not be said for the lead guitar work, which always carries a pleasurable heft, it has issues of its own. Like the vast majority of the riffs, the leadwork consistently falls into a mid-tempo jaunt that, while obviously intentional based on the shredding in “Restoration,” unfortunately contributes to the feeling of uniformity across the tracks.

Despite its flaws, Restoration remains an impressive and frequently gripping release, one whose frequent successes far outweigh its missteps. Denominate clearly understand how to write compelling riffs, how to construct climactic payoffs, and how to use dynamics to sustain interest across extended runtimes, even if that interest occasionally wanes under the album’s sheer density. With a tighter album flow and a more discerning hand applied to their clean vocal arrangements, they are a band that could easily elevate themselves from “very good” to truly exceptional. As it stands, Restoration is a rewarding listen for those willing to meet it on its own terms: patient, attentive, and prepared for an unrelenting race down the highway stuck in the “epic” gear.

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Recommended tracks: The Loathe Process, Liminal, The Cistern
You may also like: Subterranean Lava Dragon, Serein, Stone Healer, Dvota, Hath, Erebor
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Dusktone

Denominate is:
– Tuomas Pesälä (bass)
– Joni Määttä (drums)
– Eetu Pylkkänen (guitars)
– Kimmo Raappana (guitars)
– Ville Männikkö (vocals)