Style: Progressive Death Metal, Technical Death Metal, Progressive Black Metal (Harsh Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Death, Blood Incantation, Obscura, Ulcerate, The Chasm, Blut Aus Nord
Country: United States
Release date: 31 July 2026

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I take pride in not listening to singles. While I understand that a band needs to generate hype and awareness of their record, using the single as a means of attention seeking, there is a sacredness to experiencing a full album, as the artist intended. I also find that developing a relationship to some material before the final package leads to an imbalance in my first impressions of the work. Because of this, I respect bands who eschew album release cycle norms by dropping their works unannounced to the world until posted to streaming services, forcing weak-willed singles listeners to respect the LP format. An unanticipated album can work wonderfully; in 2024, my album of the year, Pyrrhon’s Exhaust, was one such example. And last Friday, I woke up to an email from 20 Buck Spin that Oregon’s progressive technical death metal band Ænigmatum dropped their third album out of the blue. What a pleasant surprise.

The last Ænigmatum album, 2021’s Deconsecrate, thrived in the space between old-school progressive death metal (late-era Death, Atheist) and more modern, slimy takes on the style (Ulcerate, Gorguts), with nasty blackened twists. Deconsecrate had no shortage of intricate grooves and interlocking guitar parts; Infinitude’s Passage continues where Ænigmatum left off. Like many modern bands, Ænigmatum tend to alternate between rapidly mutating technical sections and slower atmospheric, melodic ones, but the band also deftly avoids cliche with smart songwriting. Absolutely restless, Pierce Williams’s drumming rarely lays off the blast beats, with enough creative, fast-paced fills to make Hannes Grossmann proud; he’s the secret weapon staving off bland atmospheric sections. Whenever the strings shift from pummeling-riff mode into strange-chordal-phrasing mode, Williams is still attacking the kit—emphasizing tentacular, cymbally fills and fractal descents down to the double bass—giving the melodic parts a half-time feel rather than killing the album’s momentum. Unlike Deconsecrate, Infinitude’s Passage doesn’t have an instrumental filler track at its midpoint, further contributing to a flawless, omnipresent push of momentum.

With natural flow, Ænigmatum carefully balance catchy, headbangable riffs with uber-technical sections, helping the album feel varied despite its relatively oblique style. All throughout Infinitude’s Passage, guitarists Eli Lundgren and Kelly McLaughlin duel, as ophidian tremolos clash with typically frantic technical death metal riffs (“Pitiless Mechanism,” “A Tarnished Nexus”) or unsettling solos straight from R’lyeh filter into Revocation-inspired thrashy grooves (“Inseverable,” “Nocturne of Ageless Reverie”). But Ænigmatum’s calling card is the sickening dissonance caused by Lundgren and McLaughlin’s propensity for clashing in strange intervals—although like Ulcerate, cracks of melody shine through brightly, especially when the duo teams together for harmonized solos. “Pitless Mechanism” opens with punishing blackened death metal that is at once clean but with skronky picked parts left in, before the track has tremolos panting in Ad Nauseam-esque dissonance. Other tracks have guitars exploring the soundscape in strange time signatures like Lovecraftian gods (“Inseverable,” “Nocturne of the Ageless Reverie”). 

The production of Infinitude’s Passage, unsurprisingly handled by Colin Marston, is airy and bright, with supreme clarity allowing for the warring guitars’ conversational debates to not overwhelm each other. Additionally, the bass cuts through the complicated web of guitars and relentless drumming to join the knotted instrumental insanity—making the balanced production all the more impressive. Many of the album’s best moments are when the bass takes the lead, such as the solo opening “Architects of the Fated” and the one before the false ending of “Inseverable.” Brian Rush’s bass also gives the album most of its heft by bolstering the low end; the rest of the band, despite all the tasteful grooves and powerful riffs, doesn’t necessarily hit with that much power because the drums don’t have the punchiest mix—not a bad thing, per se, but something to note. The vocals are subdued not only in the mix but also the performance. Shared by four members, they stay in a low-range growl, interspersed with superfluous spoken word parts. Moreover, one cannot even find the lyrics online—what a uniquely metal phenomenon. The only major hiccup for Ænigmatum is that the closing title track features an incredibly pointless smooth jazz saxophone solo near the end; I just wrote a whole review talking about how tedious that trend has been for the previous near-decade. The sax is a bland and banal clincher to what is a brilliant proggy blackened tech death album. 

Sax aside, Infinitude’s Passage was one of the best surprises this year has offered, with a wide variety of dizzying riffs and absurd solos. Not only should more bands take after Ænigmatum’s bold release style, they should aim to reach the technical and production excellence of this well-oiled machine. I’ll be patiently waiting for the next Ænigmatum release—I hope it catches me by surprise.

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Recommended tracks: Pitless Mechanism, Inseverable, A Tarnished Nexus
You may also like: Tomb Mold, Horrendous, VoidCeremony, StarGazer, Aethereus, Inanna, Egregore, Bekor Qilish, The Great Old Ones, Vale of Pnath
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: 20 Buck Spin

Ænigmatum is:
– Kelly McLaughlin – Vocals/Guitar/Bass Clarinet
– Eli Lundgren – Guitar
– Brian Rush – Bass/Backup Vocals
– Pierce Williams – Drums/Synths/Backup Vocals
With guests:
– Patrick Corona – Saxophone
– Danny Quetzal – Backup Vocals