Invidiosus – Malignant Universe (Tridroid Records)

Tuesday, 22nd July 2014
Rating: 7.5/10

Doing some research on Invidiosus lead to the knowledge that they have had a revolving door of members since they formed in 2006. They’ve parted ways with 20 members, including 10 drummers! Is Invidiosus destined to be the next Spinal Tap? Do metal bands play “6 Degrees of Invidiosus” with their friends? All joking aside, hopefully with shaky line-up issues resolved, the band has now put out their first full-length album, which features some older tracks alongside some new ones.

Invidiosus should be quite ear-pleasing to fans of Origin and bands of that particular ilk. This is some mostly fast-paced, technical death metal designed to give you a pummeling. Frequent blasting and vocals that are moving as fast as the guitars pick is the name of the game and it is executed with finesse. The guitar fretwork on songs like “Exacerbated Pscychosis” is up to snuff but the band isn’t going to call it a day there. They balance out the speed with some well timed and effective grooves (check out “Psychomanteum”). These prevent the band from dipping too far into the tech death formula and giving the songs some healthy hooks for the listener to grasp onto. Additionally, for this type of material, the recording isn’t as squeaky clean and pristine as most. While everything is audible, it’s nice to have a more personable and grittier recording quality to give it some life instead of a clinical, sterile production.

With any luck, Invidiosus has formed a stable line-up and can continue to push out some more material like Malignant Universe. Sure it doesn’t exactly topple over genre conventions or anything, but death metal fans would do well to check it out. A promising start from these guys (not to mention the killer cover art).

Invidiosus on Facebook

[fbcomments width="580"]