Nebulous

Nebulous has a great concept, take riffs as heavy as those of cannibal corpse / dying fetus, and combine them with technical death metal (tech death in the abysmal dawn context of the term); the result falls short of a perfext though, and can cluttered, disorganized, and random at times (except the cover of Ridden with Disease which is organized, heavy, and the vocals are even audible). Vocals are nearly completely hidden by the other instruments, and are only sporadically "audible" or clear, which is a shame, because whenever they are clear, they're fantastic death growls which the vocalist manages to spew out as fast as he needs in order to keep up with the rest of the song. Guitar has some good solos, and the riffs mostly stay in time with the rest of the song, but some of the other riffs sound somewhat out of step with the rest of the song (mainly on the song "Devourer of the Cosmos, which sounds somewhat sloppy), and are played too fast to really register, which can make it kind of hard to enjoy (the other serious instance of this is in the beginning of SN 5270, but this is resolved later on in the song. Nebulous uses a judicious amount of sweep picking, and while its there, sweep picking isn't how they produce their technicality. The song "Binary Machine" handles the issue of syncing the best, seeming entirely synced, and the sound *really* works, with some discordant notes being thrown in to give things a "non linear" sound as morbid angel's vocalist described their sound. The bass is fast, and the tone is a bit strange, but it helps to round things out. The drums throughout the album rely just a little too much on high hats / cymbals, and can feel rather random and frantic (which is as good as it is bad). Accuracy on the drums demonstrates the same "atomic clock" accuracy that one would expect from decapitated, but without the format and structure (if that makes sense). If Nebulous could have resolved timing and recording issues (and perhaps gave the drums some more structure) this EP would have been a solid 9.25, but a point is taken away for the timing errors and poorly mixed vocals.

8.25/10

http://nebulousdeathmetal.bandcamp.com/