Style: Progressive sludge metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Polaris-era Textures, Gojira
Review by: Zach
Country: Canada
Release date: November 1st, 2022
Back in 1984, a very underground band called Metallica said that people wanted to brand them as sellouts and crucify them for the use of acoustic guitar in the song ‘Fade to Black’. Turns out, the fans were about ten years too early to call them sellouts (sorry). But that notion has always been so funny to me, “Oh no, acoustic guitar in my metal? What’s next? Saxophone? Trumpet? Violin???”. Akerfeldt forbid we start mixing the clean and harsh vocals, then we may start writing in 4/4, and that’s the way straight to the top 40 hits.
In recent years, partly to blame for the overnight success of Rivers of Nihil’s Where Owls Know My Name, more bands have been adding the session sax player to their roster. And while it’s cool, it’s fleeting. There’s the moment of “oh, sax” and then it’s gone, leaving you thinking that it could’ve been a guitar solo instead. Let’s compare them to a band like White Ward or Ne Obliviscaris, where the unconventional instrument players are part of the bands themselves, therefore having a massive impact on the writing process. Dima Dudko and Tim Charles are practically irreplaceable in their respective bands, and losing them would mean losing part of the charm that makes their bands so special. What I’m trying to get at here is that Ramskull sold me when I saw they had a dedicated violin player and triangle player.
Let me give a compliment to Ramskull immediately. This album sounds pretty fantastic for such a young and practically unknown band. The guitars have a heavy, crushing quality to them without any of the annoying over-compression of modern-day prog. The bass sounds meaty, and the drums don’t overpower anything. The vocals, both clean and harsh, are crystal clear and completely understandable. Hats off to them, because a small band from an even smaller record label shouldn’t sound even close to this good.
To me, this band sounds like the Burton C. Bell of Fear Factory met up with the Dvne boys and the latter tried their hand at recording something a bit faster. This is prog-death, make no mistake, but not the “I fucking love 6/8” kind of prog-death. There’s less time signature switching and a larger focus on riff-driven songs. And to Ramskull’s credit, the riffs are plentiful.
The third and fourth tracks, ‘Parasitic Sapiens’ and ‘Doomsayer’ are the empirical proof that this band is talented. The former being an absolute ripper from the get-go. The first half being blast-beat laden prog-death while the emotional climax has absolutely killer leads over Ramskull’s more doomy side, ending in one brutal scream. ‘Doomsayer’ lives up to its name by showing the band’s sludge-y side. But these two tracks also highlight the biggest weakness of Parasitic Sapiens.
This album seems to have no idea what it wants to be. Part sludge, part doom, part prog-death could absolutely work in theory, but I don’t quite think Ramskull are out of the growing pains phase of finding their sound yet. All the songs on this record are competently written, but they all sound the same. There is no identity, standout moments, or anything to differentiate Ramskull from every other young prog band out there other than the production.
But coming back to my first paragraph, the biggest offense of them all is having a guy who can play the violin and not using him enough. Shaking these songs up with some occasional clean sections or violin over riffs is exactly what this album needs to gain a few points from me. If I hadn’t looked at the personnel, I would’ve assumed that it was just a session violinist. But he’s a full-time member! Ramskull, use him!
Like most young bands who’ve released LPs that I’ve covered this year, I walk away disappointed. No, this album isn’t the dreaded Simulacra, but I really can’t see myself throwing on Parasitic Sapiens any time soon. But these guys are still young. They have a lot of time to grow, evolve, have a Load-Reload era, and then go back to being death metal. I want to see more from Ramskull, but I want them to develop their own identity in the time between this and album 3. Use that violin and percussion to create something a little weirder, and I can guarantee that the next score will be higher.
Recommended tracks: Parasitic Sapiens, Dog Solider
You may also like: Enrapture, Korypheus, Zō
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Prince Rupert Records
Ramskull is:
– Mike Dearman (bass, vocals)
– Shane Fletcher (vocals, guitar)
– Carson Penner (vocals, drums, percussion, triangle)
– Keegan Porter (vocals, guitars, violin)
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