Review: Anachronism – Meanders

Style: Technical Death Metal, Dissonant Death Metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Artificial Brain, Gorguts, Cynic, Atheist, Beyond Creation
Review by: Andy
Country: Switzerland
Release date: 27 January, 2023

Hailing from Lausanne, Anachronism play that pensive breed of swirling and dissonant technical death metal in the zeitgeist: think Artificial Brain, think Ad Nauseam, and, yes, think Ulcerate. With the release of Meanders, I propose that we are in real time seeing the birth of a new hegemony of Swiss tech death supremacy over my darling Canadian scene. After Stortregn’s godly technical and blackened melodic affair Impermanence and Virvum’s proggy genre zenith Illuminance, Anachronism’s dissonant angle on the style completes a new, powerful triumvirate in technical death metal. Is Switzerland the new Canada? 

Thriving in a shimmering haze of dissonance, Anachronism play mutated riffs that sound like they were soaked in a lunar acid pool. For how mechanically impressive Meanders is, the band are always in control, relaxed guitars providing atmosphere while the bass picks up the majority of the energy with a staggering performance, creative leads spanning octaves with fluidity. Tracks like “Contrasts” and “Macrocosm” somehow move slowly while somehow maintaining the aura of instrumental prowess beyond mortal comprehension while others, like the titular track, groove as hard as Replicant. A common pattern throughout Meanders is one guitar playing with dissonant Ulcerate-y things in the upper register, the bass jumping around like Jared Smith (Archspire), and the second guitar creating abstruse atmospheres with tremeloes or howling sustained tones. All the while the drums play with cephalopodian excesses and vocalist Lisa Voisard howling manically. Occasionally, she brings her impressively low bellow into an almost DSBM wail such as the end of the closer, “Dialogues”; these moments are highlights showcasing an intensity that the nearly calming atmospheres do not. 

Alex Sedin, the bassist, truly understands how to produce an album to sound outstanding: This record sounds nearly peerless. Of course, he places his own stellar bass performance super prominently in the mix, but everything else falls into place around it. Each hyperventilating guitar part, Voisard grunt, cymbal hit, and bass clack is clear and appropriately emphasized in a similar way as Andrea P’s (Ad Nauseam) renowned production work on Imperative Imperceptible Impulse. The tranquility imposed on the album with how it sounds feels like walking alone on a misty morning in the Alps and the bass-centric noodly prog death brings to mind Exist. Every riff sounds like an asteroid hitting a desolate moon, riddling the pockmarked surface with more craters. 

When the sound expands from hyper precision into slower solo sections–like in “Source” for example–Anachronism demonstrates a nonchalance with their technicality and song flow that’s what proggier bands should strive for. I’m sure every segment is insanely complex and challenging to play, yet the band makes it sound effortless with such an economy of note choices lest they overwhelm like Deviant Process are often accused of, for instance. “Prism” shows off where I think Anachronism have found their identity best with its intricate and calculated segments that aren’t shredding for its own sake; The contrapuntal discourses of Gorguts tumble into Heaving Earth’s off-kilter, groove-laden shredding before again stumbling back into a happy medium of causing head-tripping atmospheres. Anachronism’s identity is wholly in crafting sick-ass, intellectually stimulating tech death. 

Meanders thankfully never meanders much, either. Each time any string part wanders too far or any song structure becomes unwieldy, the band reigns them back in. Anachronism are in complete control of their sound. While Switzerland may not be the only land of godly tech death, they are a dominant force in the fretted tech death world. Canada can keep Forest and Hugo Doyon-Karout as their champions, but the Swiss cannot be stopped. 

Recommended tracks: Meanders, Source, Prism, Dialogues
You may also like: Ulcerate, Deviant Process, Inanimate Existence, Exist, Replicant, Heaving Earth, Ad Nauseam, Mithridatum… you get that I like tech death by this point
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Unorthodox Emanations – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook

Anachronism is:
– Lisa Voisard (vocals, guitars)
– Alex Sedin (bass)
– Manu Le Bé (guitars)
– Florent Duployer (drums)