Neuraxis-The thin line between

Prosthetic
2008



Montreal’s Neuraxis play a fairly technical, semi melodic brand of death metal that seems to thrive more on smoothness than on actual aggression. They do rattle off at a rather rapid fire pace as they oftentimes just soar into their songs with little build-up. I think their approach of launching into most of the tracks helps to just pull your attention straight in to what they are attempting to accomplish. Melodies make up a big part of the material here and they handle them with a good deal of finesse. I didn’t take to the album immediately because I think that some of the heaviness that could have been present is slightly lost beneath the gloss of the overall sound. I think they may have benefited from some sharper cuts and hooks because there were a number of times where it feels a bit one dimensional. They do let loose a few times and with spine jarring moments that were both slightly surprising and certainly welcome. It just seemed there were too many times where they kind of glided into a rather limited sound array of sounds and I could just feel the indifference rising inside me. The drums seemed more focused on speed than on actual heaviness and the difference left a few songs sounding a bit hollow. The vocals were also a bit repetitive and began to drone on at times without any real emotion or change in pitch. I like their control of the pace, but the details within the songs vary from fair to good. A decent release, but not as heavy or dynamic as I would have liked it to be.

http://www.myspace.com/neuraxis