Random Earworms II – Nucleus “Entity”

The galaxy is a wild place and NUCLEUS knows this. This album is full of wicked stand out bass guitar and solo work in the mix of eviscerating and crushing madness. My favourite tracks on the album were “Entity” and “Uplift” together and also “Outpost” and “Dominion”. All these tracks offer up a lot of variety, from knuckle dragging death to more contemporary death metal structures, but they always keep their foot on the throat. Overall these guys are not reinventing the wheel on this one but they are definitely a band that should not be overlooked. “Entity” is well worth your time!

Guitar lines seesaw back and forth, as though flailing over an unstable floor of ice, but they never lose control; the drums do everything you expect of a sick, lumbering, Death Metal beast, pounding and hammering and blasting away; vocals seemingly captured by lowering a microphone down into the abyss and waiting for the monolithic, pagan toad god to rumble out its message from the depths. I should note that the band also has a taste for sci-fi themes, evident in the cover art and the track titles. So maybe I should have gone for techno-cyborg-toad swallowing a dying sun and belching out the noxious gas.

In any case this is great stuff; big and beastly, growling and pounding, Death Metal done right. Two thumbs up. Me like.

This is a Sci-Fi Death Metal album that mixes the old school with some progressive or avant-garde elements on the songs. The mix is very well achieved in my opinion even if it is not beach, or my cup of tea. It’s a strong album, and the listening was really good, to be honest. Now I’m curious to see if the future album will be in the same quality of this one or if the band manage to surprise me with much more quality.

Look at that ‘sick’ artwork that looks like it came from mid 1980s Maplin electronics catalogues that my late Granddad used to own, whilst he ordered parts to make his ‘Time Machine’. Which turned out to be a Heathkit shortwave radio according to a quick eBay search, and god knows what we’ll do with his Ford Sierra covered in 2 inches of dust in the garage that we can’t find the keys for, last taxed and MOT’d in 1998….”

Oh, sorry. Where were we? Ah yes, this band called NUCLEUS. Well, interesting artwork does not a good band make; to be honest, it’s death metal by numbers that has been heard a million times before, and done better. As other members of the team have already pointed out, it’s DEMLICH and ANDRAMELECH  thrown into a blender with some typically American technical death metal elements like NOCTURNUS thrown into the mix, not forgetting for some strange reason GORGUTS. The mixing of the album is typically early Roadrunner-esque; not terribly “hi-fi” but many bands make a very lucrative life being “anti-fi” (look at how bleak BURZUM are production wise, and extreme metal fans can’t get enough of that sort of thing). It’s not all bad news, of course. Tracks such as “Approach” are rather crushing and lull the listener into a cosy nostalgic feeling of when they first got into extreme metal all those decades ago; when the earth was younger, your hair wasn’t grey, and the Internet was just a thing discussed a lot in computer magazines, and on Tomorrow’s World broadcast on BBC 1 on a Wednesday evening. To summarise, a competent bunch of American lads that do a decent blend of death metal, but in the long term the longevity of their output remains to be seen in a quick fix world of overwhelming choice via a couple of key strokes and mouse clicks.

The album opens with “The Arrival”, which wastes no time in establishing the mood, and I very quickly realise that I’m in for a ride, as it seems, on a large death metal spacecraft hurtling through the depths of space (possibly with a few too many captains on the bridge – read on).

NUCLEUS offer a sound that is undoubtedly death metal but with a few peculiar twists. Their style features traditional elements of the sub-genre but is also quite progressive, with a technical feel. The musicianship throughout the album is at the highest echelon and the band works together with true precision. Each track includes a number of transitions and changes in tempo and tone, a format which compliments the sci-fi theme and adds to the futuristic, unearthly feel to the work. At times this constant changing of pace is exciting, but to be honest, after a while the mosaic of sound felt patchy and by the end of the album it was all a bit of blur. I found that one track blended into the next and before I knew it, I was thrown off-orbit and had lost track of where I was on the album. On my second and third play-through I did warm to the band’s unique style, however in the end this format turned out to be too much for me and caused a bit of a sensory overload (which says more about me than anything else).

If you are the type of metalhead who enjoys progressive styles and amazing technical ability then “Entity” is for you. Overall, it’s a high quality release with outstanding production by a band of insanely talented musicians. I may have taken a life pod and ejected myself off the NUCLEUS ship, however I imagine that there are many more scrambling to jump aboard. This metal beast will no doubt forge ahead, navigating the vast stretches of death metal space, to explore new horizons and successfully carve a path all of it’s own.

I’m getting late to this article and I could barely give this job two listens but, wow, it was worth it.
This work tips a drum beating with a wild and devastating rhythm section. The guitars do a spectacular job and the dark voices grant a dark, spatial and imposing science fiction landscape.
38 minutes of killer riffs that rip your skin. This is on another level. 9/10 for me.
Excellent.

At first I was intrigued by the sound they had going on. The intro track “Arrival” brought forth a fascinating sound that I found quite unusual in Death Metal, however as the tracks went on it went in the direction of the more traditional black metal path. It was a fair strategy, offering something different and interesting to lure the listener in, and once you have started you really do have to finish it. Anything else is just illogical. And after all, the tracks do intertwine rather well with each other.

It’s honestly quite neatly folded sci-fi Death Metal, although what I found a bit unsettling was when I found a part of each track I really liked but then that beat vanished as quickly as it appeared. It’s almost as if these guys had million great ideas which they then proceeded to try and squeeze into about 38 and a half minutes.
Out of the eight tracks on this record I have to give a slight edge to the already mentioned opening track, due to the unusual lure it has in the beginning. Like an alien space ship landing on earth.