Style: Progressive Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Strapping Young Lad, Soilwork, Dark Tranquility
Country: Ukraine
Release date: 19 April 2024
Some artists are insanely prolific. About once a week on average, Andy will announce to all of us that a new Kosm album has just dropped—for some reason he endures every release from a man who puts out something like fifty albums per year. Deha is another insanely prolific artist, and both make King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard look like Tool. Fortunately, I don’t know any bands like that, and I can’t imagine wanting any artist to put out that much music. Diminium’s debut, Dissonant, dropped on November 30th last year—and Dimi Rich, the man behind the band, has been busy these past five months working on new EP Dominant. That’s fast compared to most artists, and as long as he doesn’t start releasing an album a week, I’m happy.
Dissonant was a nice little surprise when it dropped, a record clearly influenced by Devin Townsend’s erstwhile outlet Strapping Young Lad, brimming with anger and energy, but Rich managed to utilise that sound to his own end, pouring much of the frustration and heartbreak of the war in his country into his music. Dissonant is a quick twenty-one minute EP with five tracks that sees Rich infuse his sound with black metal flavours.
“Oblivion” makes that influence instantly apparent with its steadfast blast beat rhythms, and some tremolo-picked riffs later on, techniques which resurface over the course of the EP. “Vortex” opens more like a System of a Down track and feints with a filthy noughties metal groove before then turning back to the blackened tremolo, adding spacey chorus effects and, buried ominously behind the other instruments, eerie chants, all reminiscent of Dodheimsgard. Rich’s influences are found all over the place—Dominant isn’t a black metal EP, it just borrows judiciously from the genre—but he manages to weave them into a consistent tapestry. If one idea doesn’t sit so comfortably, the next one will. A lot of that comes down to Rich’s versatile vocal range; he modulates his harshes between death metal growls and higher, harsher black metal screams, each section feeling dominated and defined by the vocal performance.
“Ordeal” opens with eerie flamenco and bursts of distortion, and again marries black metal influences to an almost nu-metal sense of groove. Having recently reviewed an album that suffered from a lacklustre rhythm section, Rich’s mastery of rhythm is all the more apparent. He has a great ear for grooves, which can only be achieved through an understanding of how drums and guitar must interplay. That’s also apparent on “Shifts”, a punchier track that sees Rich take on some belting heavy metal cleans (how about that new Judas Priest record everyone?) and pushes into an uncompromisingly ballsy breakdown. Dominant closes out with an instrumental version of “Avoid a Void” from Dissonant which is thrown in as a bit of a bonus track. I’m not wild about instrumental versions of vocal-led tracks and Rich doesn’t really do anything new with it, but, y’know, it’s fine.
It shouldn’t be any surprise to hear that Rich is an award winning sound engineer. Dissonant sounded fantastic and so does Dominant. Indeed, there’s very little to criticise across the board, but Rich never quite blows me away. He’s a tight composer but I want some more pushing the envelope, more of that prog ambition. What would a ten minute Diminium track sounds like? What would more genre experimentation look like? Weaving in blackened influences is a promising start, and there’s no doubt that Rich has plenty more to offer.
Dimi’s rich ideas [Sam berated me for not doing any “rich” puns, so I did this incredibly weak one] continues to impress, demonstrating an understanding of black metal and incorporating it seamlessly into his established sound, and while Dominant is short but sweet, it shows huge potential for the future. I’d love to see Diminium keep experimenting with different genre influences, as well as explore more progressive structures, but Dominant proves that Rich is a consistent and entertaining songwriter with a hell of a lot of potential.
Recommended tracks: Oblivion, Vortex, also it’s not on the EP but go check the cover of Dua Lipa’s “Training Season”
You may also like: Mean Messiah, Opsimath
Final verdict: 7/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
Diminium is:
– Dimi Rich (everything)
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