This is what normal people think all heavy metal sounds like

As a metalhead, one sometimes finds it necessary or worthwhile to explain the appeal of this dark, noisy, morbid thing that sustains us. If one partakes of a wide array of subgenres, it’s not terribly difficult to wax comparatively (and eloquently) about the strapping adventurousness of Viking metal, the malevolent grandeur of black metal, the plainspoken momentum of thrash metal, the robust sonorousness of melodic death metal, the towering despair of doom metal and so on. If clever, one can cajole even the tamest Top 40 listener to perk an ear, but at the moment the needle drops, the face puckers, the body leans away and the cathedrals of expectation you have painstakingly built up crumble swiftly to dust.

What do non-metalheads hear in this complex cacophony that you know to hold such wondrous depth? Usually, “A bunch of loud noise with no melody, and that awful screaming.” This generic smear is painful to the metalhead soul, but sometimes – one must admit – it is accurate. Case in point: Intransigence, the debut full-length from San Antonio technical death metal band Abhorrent.

This is not a knock on a group of sloppy amateurs – because really Abhorrent’s musicianship is off the charts. Everything is precise, impeccably timed and recorded, with lightning-fast chugga-chugga twiddle-diddle thubba-thwap-thwap-thwap bwoww-bwoww guhhhhh bippita-bippita gruuuuhh spiraling everywhere. Yea, Intransigence is actually a feat of extreme musicianship.

It’s the songwriting. There are too many unmemorable, ultimately meaningless riffs being thrown around. The vocals aren’t inherently bad, but their guttural simplicity simply wallows in the tech-death storm, offering no charismatic boost for listeners trapped in the milieu. Usually over-intricate stuff like this gains appeal upon closer examination – and there is some mild improvement here – but getting close to these particular songs is unpleasant, like staring into a bright light. Despite the frequent and frenetic changes, there can be few genuine surprises because there are so few genuine grooves and catchy moments. So much of the album sounds like parts written in isolation being played across each other, with no heed for cohesion or satisfying progression.

Not all technical death metal is this overwrought and obtuse, and ultimately hollow! Neither is the genre still getting its legs under it! Necrophagist’s Epitaph was more than 10 years ago! We live in the era of Obscura, and Meshuggah, and Djent, and The Dillinger Escape Plan! In the year 2015 there’s no excuse for building up labyrinths this impenetrable without putting a Minotaur inside.

Some of the songs do offer glimpses of potential. “A Lightness of Mind” seems to have something of a pleasing arc to it. The last 40 seconds of “Ill Conceived” move with a spellbinding, corrupted grace. There is also some dissonance at the edges of these songs that hint at something more, but that something never comes into view (one band photo shows a member in a Deathspell Omega T-shirt, so there’s that). For those willing to sustain this kind of pummeling in exchange for a ticket to eldritch places, there are releases that offer far more travel miles for the torture. Try Abyssal, try Imperial Triumphant. Try Wormed or Artificial Brain.

The metal press is usually very forgiving of this kind of stuff because:

A) It’s so murky and overstuffed that there’s technically enough information in there to make for good music.

B) Nobody likes shitting on a young band who have obviously worked so hard to get this thing pressed.

C) It’s hard to publish interviews and giddy news stories about a band you’ve said anything negative about.

D) The writers have some idea of how difficult this music is to play.

In doing so, they treat metalheads like non-metalheads – impressionable lambs unable to parse good metal from bad. They also indulge in fawning sentimentality. Neither of these behaviors are metal, and Intransigence is not a good album. Yes, Abhorrent clearly have the musicianship thing figured out. However, it all means nothing if they don’t step out of ten-riffs-per-minute mode and write some better songs.