Style: experimental / cybergrind / Nintendocore (harsh vocals)
Review by: Josh
Country: US-CA
Release date: 4 June, 2021
I’m a sucker for anything avant-garde, regardless of quality. If I luck out and run into something good, I’m about to have my mind blown, and if it’s a shit-show, at the very least it’ll be an entertaining shit-show. So when Sam messaged me asking whether this album was, in his words, avant-garde or avant-garbage, I knew right then and there I had to give it a go.
Before we get into answering his question, let’s take a look at what Temenigru are doing here. Terminal blends together all kinds of extreme metal as well as metalcore, EDM, and, of all things, chiptune, and compresses the resulting sonic goulash into just under 25 minutes. There is a lot going on here. Taking a look at the album’s busiest track, “Singularity”, we kick off with a dungeon synth intro before pivoting into a breakbeat and then hard-cutting to an extreme metal groove featuring deep, growled vocals. Shortly after, a piano comes in, extreme metal drumming still present, dungeon synth ambience still present, and the vocals proceed to alternate between shrieks and reverbed-out cleans. Occasionally, the cleans are pitch-shifted up to chipmunk levels. The overall experience is akin to listening to “You Without End” by Deafheaven for the first time, but somehow with even less subtlety. Oh, forgot to mention – that’s only the first two minutes of the song.
Needless to say, there is a lot going on in this album. Most tracks switch up styles multiple times per minute, with varying qualities of execution. Sometimes you get a track like “Real Virtual”, where the aggressive metal riffage melds well with the video game-y synths and you’re left with something almost akin to symphonic metal. Most of the time, however, the band’s wildly varying sonic stylings fail to form a coherent whole. Often Temenigru seem to be just tossing out ideas, giving each a few bars before moving onto another, never looking back. This makes for a frustrating listening experience. There’s so much more that could be done here if only Temenigru would give the music some breathing room. Even worse, though, is when the band shoves two completely incongruent ideas together with no regards for how well they meld. The worst incidence of this has to be the end of “Ego Divergence”, which is for the most part dominated by a guitar solo that would be the highlight of the album, if not for the frankly baffling pitch-shifted vocals over the top of the first part of it. It legitimately sounds like one of the band members got wasted and their drunken slurring was picked up by a still-active mic in the studio. I cannot fathom why they decided to add that in.
It is important to keep in mind, though, that the style shifts are only frustrating because Temenigru‘s ideas are generally quite good. When left to blossom, the result is often great. Tracks like “Sky Knife” show what the band can do when they’re not attempting to shove as many ideas as possible into a single song, and the resulting sound is one I’d love to hear more of. They really do know how to write a good riff, and when they’re not overdoing it, the electronic influences add a lot to their tracks. However, that side of them is squared off from us, the listener, far too often. I wouldn’t call this release avant-garbage, but Temenigru really need to learn to effectively implement their ideas if they want to produce something cohesive. It was a fun listen the first few times through, but I don’t see myself coming back.
Recommended tracks: Sky Knife, Real Virtual, Fourier Possession
Recommended for fans of: MASTER BOOT RECORD? Maybe? I’m kinda at a loss on this one
Final verdict: 4.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | MySpace | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Big Money Cybergrind – Instagram | Facebook
Temenigru is:
– Vanja Venezia (everything)
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