Style: Technical death metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Necrophagist, Suffocation,
Country: Missouri, United States
Release date: 18 September 2026

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The last time I read The Odyssey, I was in college taking a class dedicated to the tome. Reading my deckle-edged Fagles translation again—prompted, admittedly, by Christopher Nolan’s recent film adaptation—and seeing my notes in the margins, I feel like I’m reading a stranger using my own handwriting. Whatever spirituality or worldview I had back then has mostly worn away or been reshaped in the time since. Like Odysseus, I’ve spent the last 20 or so years fending off my own trials and monsters, though my Cyclops is a mortgage and my Laestrygonians are the impostor syndrome I’ve felt at every job I’ve ever had (including this one).

You know what hasn’t budged one iota, though? My appetite for needlessly, gloriously overwrought technical death metal. The trickster Hermes, appearing to me as our editor Christopher,¹ said “take Hypaethral” and I accepted without knowing anything about the album. Not even its title. And when I saw the name Odyssean I couldn’t help but smile wryly towards Mount Olympus. A genre I love fusing with literature I’m currently rereading? I was primed to review this album.

Hypaethral pull fruit from the Necrophagist and Suffocation branches of the death metal tree, and there’s plenty of immediate pleasure in the band’s technical excess. “Ophidian Maw” hangs heavy from the Suffocation branch. The blast beat violence and fretboard gymnastics transition into groovy sections in the middle and end of the song, giving the technical onslaught some shape and personality. “Abyssal Hymn II” starts with a slower flow that appeals to the part of my brain that still considers a rock a versatile household appliance. Then, when the pace turns violent, vocalist Skyler Nohrenberg bellows the abyss into submission.

“Stone Shepherd” is another knuckledragger, its limping opening riff giving way to a virtuosic flurry of fretwork and an impressive, sweepy solo. “Stygian Sea” is also noteworthy because of its guitar solo, which closes out a moody bridge section that brings a dynamic and emotive shift not just to the song, but the entire album. It’s a dark, soft, jazzy moment with some chalky bass and psychedelic guitar arpeggios that give the listener a breather, though I find the choice of putting this moment at the very end of Odyssean slightly odd.

Those flashes of personality give me something to return for, but they don’t quite overcome the feeling that Odyssean is curiously predictable in its complexity—paint-by-numbers tech death, if you will. Like a story you already know, you revisit it in search of new insights or nostalgic familiarity. Hypaethral deliver the latter well enough. I’m not checking the tracklist constantly to see how much time the album has left, but beyond those aforementioned standout moments, repeat listens aren’t revealing any new truths. Finely diced riffs, violent drumwork, and subterranean harsh vocals are all ever-present. These hallmarks are part of the comfort of tech death, and Hypaethral execute them with so much skill that I don’t get tired of these familiar tropes, even when I see them coming.

Less comforting is that snare drum. Against the clean, compressed tightness of the other instruments, its blast-beaten pangpangpang has an empty, papery hollowness that distracts from everything around it. In a rawer mix, that sound could fit right in. Adding to the oddity, the snare sound varies from track to track: on “Maelstrom of Charybdis” and “Ire of the Gods”, for example, it pulls my attention away from practically everything else, while elsewhere that hollow clang is subdued or absent entirely. I love when an album has little variances in production like that throughout its runtime, but on Odyssean I find myself bracing for when those pangy tracks come around.

I went into Odyssean hoping for a voyage worth recounting and came away with a trip and route I already knew by heart. Hypaethral’s command of these well-worn waters leaves me wishing they’d ventured further beyond them. Skillful as the instrumental and vocal performances are, they are more like a familiar welcome home than a Siren’s call. So I don’t need anyone to tie me to the mast.

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Recommended tracks: “Ophidian Maw”, “Abyssal Hymn II”, “Stone Shepherd”
You may also like: Inferi, Sallow Moth, Soreption
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook

Label: Independent

Hypaethral is:
– Allen Gengerich (guitars)
– Skyler Nohrenberg (vocals)
– Michael Ranne (drums)

1. Not Nolan, yet still English ↩︎