Review: Entheogen – Transmogrify

Style: Prog Death/Post Metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Opeth, Cult of Luna
Review by: Andy
Country: Belgium
Release date: 12 August 2022

Metal necessitates power (to an extent). Huge power chords and crunchy distortion, while standard, are hardly the only way, though, as post metal bands like Agalloch employ the power of nature through meditative, yet expansive, soundscapes. When Entheogen crossed my desk promising a mix of post metal and progressive death metal, my interest was piqued: I anticipated the huge crescendos of post metal, the distorted, in-your-face guitars of death metal, and perhaps some massive riffage to make mountains look miniature. The album cover certainly delivered, depicting a small figure in front of a ginormous natural doorway made out of trees. Could Entheogen merge the more plaintive power of a naturalist band like Agalloch or Kaatayra with the more standard, crushing power of Opethian prog death? Unfortunately, Entheogen do not have the power to write even passable metal. 

What I ended up getting is a lukewarm soup of week-old guitar noodles in a broth of stale melodies.​​ The only *crunch* to contrast with the watery liquids are underutilized Akerfeldtian harshes, those deep growls a cruel reminder I could be listening to Opeth instead. To start the album with a brief intro featuring annoying bird sounds isn’t ideal songwriting; such an odd choice is compounded when one considers that five other tracks are short instrumentals with absolutely zero corporeal substance, degrading the poor, overworked track list. Defective sampling choices populate nearly all these “songs”: “Shiva” includes more funky bird calls, “Ashur” features misplaced dungeon synth and running water, and “Hel” sounds as if space age music were more concerned with finding a true vacuum than any stellar substance–literally. A single hydrogen atom would be more interesting than these tracks.  

To disregard the bad decisions of the interludes leaves a few tracks of the actual post metal/prog death hybrid, starting with “Journey,” which switches among styles and tones frequently. The soup analogy takes on a new meaning in these tracks: the building blocks of the songs are a glomerate mess of ideas with few meaningful transitions and fewer climaxes. While areas like the solo section of “Journey” are technically proficient, it amounts to nothing. No climax, no satisfying crunch of the guitars, no interesting transition to the next tepid section. Other tracks, like instrumental “Cycles” with its bluesy tone, lack real distortion; additionally, the guitars sound like they’re only coming from one channel and, therefore, sound completely insubstantial–as if any gust of wind could blow them from that sole channel out into the world. Unfortunately, every time the band starts getting meatier with the riffs or ideas, Transmogrify switches back to a distortionless, impactless guitar. The “post” in the genre tag must reference the cleaner tone of post rock guitars yet without the buildups that bring the power to that style.

Apart from the vocal performance, the best thing that can be said about the real tracks is the rhythm section, plodding bass and decently varied drums propelling the ephemeral guitars forward a little; however, as soon as a track like “Journey” picks up the pace to more than a comparative crawl, the urgency of the riff suddenly evacuates to the void. The bland nature of their transitional elements (or lack thereof) and flimsy riffs infiltrate every moment. Even the decent drum sound is taken away as the production on “A Pale End” abandons any punch prior to the track. As soon as Entheogen has a seldom good idea, they transition to a worse one–which they then repeat. “A Pale End” gains momentum toward the end of the track and then suddenly… ends like “Pull Me Under.” Though of course “Pull Me Under” leads into a legendary ballad while “A Pale End” leads into the nothingness of the void, “Hel”–the pacing of Transmogrify is nonsensical.  

To close out this review I will implore that if the musicians in Entheogen release a third album that they enlist the help of a better producer to maximize the impact of their more technical prog death sections, that they consider how the album as a whole flows, and that they try to write more impactful melodies. Every riff and every note feel just slightly off, leading to a disconcerting vibe across Transmogrify. The only thing preventing the score from falling off a cliff is the relative strength of the instrumental performances, but they can’t do much on their own. Metal needs some power behind it, and Entheogen haven’t figured that out yet.

Recommended tracks: Journey, Cycles
You may also like: Culak, Proliferation, Lunar
Final verdict: 3/10

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

Label: Independent

Entheogen is:
– Laurens de Cock (vocals, guitars)
– Keyvan Valamanesh (guitars)
– Anton Hellemans (drums)