Dysrhythmia’s Terminal Threshold is a state-of-the-art progressive metal release!

Band: Dysrhythmia
Album: Terminal Threshold
Record label: Translation Loss Records
Release date: October 4th 2019
Genre: Progressive metal/ Avant-Garde metal
Order: https://translationlossrecords.bigcartel.com
Digital: https://dysrhythmia.bandcamp.com
Dyshrythmia facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Dysrhythmia/

Hell yes! Every time I hear that a new Dysrhythmia album is out it feels like a holiday for all you dissonant cultists out there around the globe! Last time these guys released an album was in 2016. You can check out our review here!  And these guys never disappoint. There’s no doubt that they will always deliver some majestic, brutal music for our hearing pleasure. Dysrhythmia released their latest album called Terminal Threshold  on October 4th 2019. And this is our 2 cents on the goddamn thing.

Terminal Threshold by Dysrhythmia">

For some of you who haven’t checked out this band before, Dysrhythmia is a hellish trio playing progressive metal instrumental music. The band features Kevin Hufnagel on guitar (Vaura, Byla,  Sabbath Assembly, Gorguts), Colin Marston on bass (Krallice, Gorguts, Behold the Arctopus, Encenathrakh, Indriocothere) and Jeff Ebb on the drums. The bad was formed in 1998 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and has released 8 studio albums to date: Contradiction (2000), No Interference (2001), Pretest (2003),  Barriers and Passages (2006), Psychic Maps (2009), Test of Submission (2012), The Veil of Control (2016) and finally, Terminal Threshold. The latest album is a 32-minute-long album with the total of 8 songs.

The first song is called Nuclear Twilight and it’s a pretty straight forward one, with some repetitive riffs in the beginning of the song which becomes louder and louder as time goes on. And then, the music gets more elaborate as Kevin begins casting those riffs on our brains. And yes, the song has Dysrhythmia trademarks all over it.  For a moment, the tune has this 80s thrash beat but it soon gets crazier than that, believe me.  This band always delivers these crazy, technical guitar riffs accompanied by some masterful drumming. The clean part and solo played over it is just breathtaking! The next song, Power Symmetry, starts with some chunky, dissonant riff right off the bat. And it’s a sonic equivalent of a meat chopper, if you know what I mean. The song builds up slowly and then, Kevin unleashes some tapping fury on his already-molested-enough guitar. The guitar bends he does add the exotic flavour to it and once again the band brings back the riff from the beginning of the song. Plague Delay’s riff sounds as if your body is attacked by millions of insects, and each one wants a share of you! And in this track you can hear how powerful Colin Marston’s bass sound really is! He is hammering the living shit out of his instrument!  Those guitar licks are the kind of details that bring this song to life and they’ll be stuck in your head for a while. I assure you! The break part where the whole thing slows down and Kevin starts playing this amazing melody is just astounding! That’s one of the peaks of this album! The song also has this straight-forward Voivod-esque riff that sounds pretty neat! And yeah, that swarm-sounding riff is the real deal! The highlight of the song is Kevin’s beautiful melodic part that can be heard on several occasions in the song.

The next one, Progressive Entrapment is pounding its way right from the start! A head-on, brutal, supersonic assault where Jeff Ebb beats the living shit out of his drums. The brutality is then merged with Kevin’s recognizable chord progression. And then, the track gets slowed down as technicality starts to, little by little, fade completely. Out of the blue, Kevin once again delivers some beautiful sounding parts. The song then builds up into a noisy meat-grinder that sucks in everything that’s isn’t dissonant enough. Our favorite hellish trio unleashes the sonic fury upon our ears. Killer song really!

Twin Stalkers starts with the drums and this eerie sounding riff that might remind you of Dysrhythmia’s earlier works. Actually, the riff is damn catchy! And the song has more of a simplistic nature when compared with most of Dysrhythmia’s jawbreaking technical stuff. I must say this is probably one of the best solos Kevin Hufnagel did on this album. The tone of his guitar is just the way I like it. And it surely adds the spooky vibe to the song.  And even the riffs that follow are a bit creepy sounding to say the least. Awesome track indeed! The next tune, Rule of the Mountain incorporates some masterful bass lines by Colin Marston.  This deep, thick sounding bass bleds perfectly with Kevin’s razor-sharp guitar sound. And out of the blue, the song gets totally thrashy for a while and then the dissonance kicks in (once again)! As the time goes by, you might actually get it that Kevin listened to a lot of speed metal bands back in the day. I assure you. Never Was Then Again is a crazy song from the start! Killer riffs, breathtaking guitar mastery, ten-thousand-tons-heavy-sounding bass and some merciless drumming. All in one song!  And the main theme of this song is so damn good! It will make you play it on repeat over and over again!  This one surely stands out from the rest of the tracks on this album. And the last one on the album has pretty cool sounding name – Premonition Error. Expect nothing but a barrage of sounds. This track has some tasty riffs but also some weird sounding stuff as well.

Dysrhythmia’s Terminal Threshold is yet another breathtaking experience by this hellish trio! You will enjoy every second of it, for sure! I have to commend that the whole album sounds perfect, and you have Colin Marston, the producer, to blame for that, and  -  Menegroth – The Thousand Caves Studio. Terminal Threshold incorporates good old dissonant, noisy, progressive metal vibes of Dysrhythmia blended with the elements of thrash & speed metal. Terminal Threshold is easily one of the best albums of 2019! No doubt about it! This album might be handy to run away from all the death growls that we’re constantly exposed to. And when you think about it, instrumental metal bands have always been an oddity, right?

Rating: 9.2/10