Sometime in late 2022, I found myself in Jackknife Brewing in Kelowna, British Columbia, with friend of the blog Cody Dilullo. I'd headed over from Toronto to the West Coast for a friend's wedding. As it happened, Canadian tech death legends First Fragment were playing the city the very next night. Opening for them were BC's own Exterminatus, a five piece death metal outfit right behind them on the bill, and placed there for good reason. There's something awe-inspiring about tech death done well in a live setting, in just watching a group shred through impossibly complicated material like it's no trouble at all, and the band's talent was impossible to deny.
At the time, the band were playing in support of their second album, 2018's Laniakea, and offered a promising take on the sci-fi bent we've seen from various corners of the tech death world (see Rings of Saturn, The Zenith Passage, Gigan, Wormed, and so on). Still, I'm happy to report that sophomore Echoes from a Distant Star: Part 1 eclipses that record in nearly every way, with even more memorable songwriting that is as comfortable offering punishing riffs as it is dabbling into sci-fi-themed tech death's spacey tendencies. It's not like it takes a while to get there either; for all the ridiculous guitar parts that make up opener "Cosmic Disturbance", it still opens with a crisp, airy bass solo, and one that feels just right for the vibe the band are going for.
Still, any nifty solo work aside, the main unit of measurement at hand is still the riff. Outside of maybe closers "New Theia" and "The Signal", the band rarely veer into flashy guitar heroics along the lines of, say, Cytotoxin or fellow BCers Archspire themselves, instead keeping the guitar work in the lower register for the most part. There's a time and place for that sort of thing in tech death, but it helps Echoes from a Distant Star plenty that the focus remains on keeping things consistently heavy, chunky, and immediate, with relatively little room for the prog detours similar bands often take. Of course, there are some surprises in between – like with "Cosmic Disturbance", album highlight "Starbound" opens with a lead section that calls to mind Jeff Loomis' work with Conquering Dystopia, before erupting into a nasty groove not unlike a faster take on "Sons of Belial" from The Faceless' one glorious foray into the subgenre with 2008's essential Planetary Duality. But there's no further navel-gazing here—just a sweet lead that leads into an even cooler song.
At a brisk half hour in length, Echoes from a Distant Star is careful not to overstay its welcome, presenting an excellent slab of tech death that does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more (excepting a somewhat silly—if still fun—cover of "Rock Me Amadeus" at the end). Plus, the performances across the board are inhumanly tight, and the production work does a stellar job of ensuring every detail is audible. BC's metal scene has produced many a big act over the years, from Strapping Young Lad and 3 Inches of Blood to current tech death heavyweights Archspire, but in nearly all of those bands' cases it took at least a few albums to really break out. Echoes from a Distant Star is a very promising tech death release, and might prove to be that very turning point for Exterminatus.