photos by Kristel Boucher
“Artifice Dissolves puts DISSUMULATOR at the forefront of progressive death-thrash. They’ve become undeniable.” – Decibel Magazine
Artifice Dissolves is the second album by Montreal’s death/thrash trio DISSIMULATOR – coalescing members of Chthe’ilist, Atramentus, Beyond Creation, Incandescence, and more – is streaming in its entirety ahead of its release this Friday on 20 Buck Spin.
With Artifice Dissolves, DISSIMULATOR drummer Phillipe Boucher, bassist Antoine Daigneault, and guitarist/vocalist Claude Leduc accelerate beyond the formidable sonic coordinates established by their Lower Form Resistance debut and plunge headlong into a future world where technological hegemony and catastrophic entropy exist in perfect equilibrium. Their jagged sci-fi death/thrash has evolved into an ever more labyrinthine construct, fusing serrated riff matrices and volatile rhythmic architecture into an algorithm-obliterating neural hack. The album propels itself like an untethered artificial consciousness recursively rewriting its own code, with each movement revealing another phantasmagorical dimension within the band’s bionic mythology. Razor-wire guitar lines, alien yet familiar, whiplash and intersect at impossible angles whilst the rhythm section drives songs like “Alloyed” and “Neon Metropolis” through perpetual states of intensifying velocity, collapse, and reassembly, creating a surging sense of momentum undeterred by its relentless intricacy.
An awe-inspiring convergence of futuristic world-building and unrestrained, unapologetic technical aggression, Artifice Dissolves is a cyborg hallucination of a civilization wasting away in the sunless gutters of its autonomous megacities, the warped fever dreams of an omniscient God-machine, and the malignant side-effects of its cybernetic enhancements. And beneath the album’s dazzling precision and violent thrust, DISSIMULATOR maintains a timeless human striving for order and transcendence beyond the technological.
The drums on Artifice Dissolves were recorded by Xavier Berthiaume at Productions Tehom. The bulk of the audio, including additional vocals on several tracks by Laurent Bellemare, was recorded by the band, then reamped, mixed, and mastered by Hugues Deslauriers at Roarrrsoundsstudio. The album is completed with artwork by Noah Cutter Meihoff (Ghost, Imperial Triumphant), layout by Audrey Pasquini / Bangs! Studio, and photography by Kristel Boucher. Any fan of Obliveon, Sadus, Voivod, Cryptic Shift, Miscreance, Vektor, Watchtower, Atheist, Hexx, Decapitated, Meshuggah, and Cynic should investigate DISSIMULATOR.
Hear DISSIMULATOR’s Artifice Dissolves early only on YouTube at THIS LOCATION.
Artifice Dissolves is out this Friday, October 2nd on LP, CD, and digital platforms. Preorder this elite auditory weaponry at the 20 Buck Spin webshop HERE and Bandcamp HERE.
“DISSIMULATOR understand something that a depressing number of technical metal bands do not: Complexity is worthless without proper songs… like the debut, the vocal hooks – including the tastefully vocoded ones – stick after repeat listens. Artifice Dissolves puts DISSUMULATOR at the forefront of progressive death-thrash. They’ve become undeniable.” – Decibel Magazine
“Thankfully, they succeed not only through their obvious technical abilities, but by writing a tractor trailer’s worth of seriously cool shit for the listener to enjoy. They also ensure that just about every tune runs the gamut from blasting fury to proggier diversions or ‘smartly ignorant’ stuff… More than anything else, Artifice Dissolves just exudes personality, and that can be heard in every last detail of the record. And there are a lot of details on this record.” – Last Rites
“With Artifice Dissolves, the automaton has only accelerated its evolution with novel sub(genre)routines: the end of ‘Alloyed’ slams like Suffocation in a cyberpunk junkyard, and ‘Neon Metropolis’ leaks an oil slick of blackened tremolos, flirting with overt melody. Unlike the overblown hype perpetrated by our current AI overlords, there is no artifice here.” – Toilet Ov Hell
“DISSIMULATOR feel like a cyborg crunching your mid-section as Artifice Dissolves is a battering, mind-bending experience that also enthralls. This is technical wizardly and death metal weirdness smooshed together with some sort of strange goo from another place. This will steamroll you as you’re mentally working your way through other dimensions.” – Meat Mead Metal
“Artifice Dissolves demonstrates the band’s unique stance on technical death/thrash metal is here to stay and is an integral part of their identity… They allow their sound to exist as it is on record and you are left to decide on its quality. All in all, Artifice Dissolves is a shredding experience…” – The Razor’s Edge
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The post DISSIMULATOR: Artifice Dissolves, The Incinerating Second LP From Montreal Sci-Fi Death/Thrash Band With Chthe’ilist, Atramentus Members, Now Streaming; Album Drops This Friday On 20 Buck Spin first appeared on Earsplit Compound.