Edenic Past — Red Amarcord
Brutal death metal is a live band’s music. Ping snares blasting atop chugging drop tuned bass and skronking guitar leads lend themselves best to listeners who feel the band’s rumble in a dive bar. That’s how you catch the mood. It’s a simultaneously cerebral, highly organized and virtuosic music coupled with hearty somatic pulse, all pushed to the most comically extreme realm possible. Yet Edenic Past’s Red Amarcord is a disctinctly 2020 metal album; a bedroom brutal death metal project from Krallice’s Colin Marston and Nicholas McMaster with Paulo Paguntalan on vocals. It’s curious to hear such prolific musicians create such dense and characteristically brutal music in the time of quarantine. Don’t let the band’s deceptively humble origins, or lack of a live drummer, deceive you. Edenic Past is a fully fledged brutal death metal project, one that celebrates the genre’s tropes and adds a few satisfying twists to the formula.
Opening track For Brandon Chase and Beria tear up nearly four minutes with slam drumming and breakneck riffs. It’s blink-and-you-miss-it stuff that’s kept engaging by the sheer confidence and virtuosity of the musicians. Pagnuntalan’s vocals are especially wicked, ranging from the deepest of rapid fire swamp gurgles to black metal shrieks. The songwriting is more conservative that Marston and McMaster’s other projects, but it’s refreshing to hear these talented musicians toy with a genre they are so clearly fans of. The straightforward genre songwriting feels almost liberating when the musicians are lighthearted and indulgent blast.
Of course being mixed and mastered by Marston himself has its benefits. While the most obvious point of comparison is McMaster’s own Geryon projects, themselves being an atmospheric strain of death metal, Red Armarcord is far less heady with less room to breath. The sound quality is akin to an early Disgorge record, though considerably more balanced. Less garish ping, and more pronounced bass. These modern touches don’t diminish the overall effect — it’s apparent this is the sound they love, and the band emulate it well despite the lack of acoustic drumming.
Yet Edenic Past does flex their songwriting more by the track “Kolyma”. What starts as another dose of brutal death quickly sheds its percussive assault and gives way to droning dissonant six string bass spaciousness, recalling McMaster’s own Geryon. Shades of New Krallice emerge with Colin’s airy synth leads that lend an additional touch of melody to the ringing bass passages. It’s not quite atmospheric, but a clever way to let the music breathe using Colin’s distinct musical repertoire. Red Armarcord never evolves too far beyond the genre’s songwriting tropes, but they’ve created great brutal death metal that manages to capture both the threads threads of heady technicality and neck snapping physicality in the genre’s blood-caked tapestry.
