FRAGMENTARY EVIDENCE

"Fragmentary Evidence" is the 2nd full-length studio album by Canadian technical/progressive death metal act Augury. While the band´s debut full-length studio album "Concealed (2004)" was released on the indepentent, Montreal based Galy Records, this time around Augury have signed with Nuclear Blast Records, which should give "Fragmentary Evidence" a much better exposure than the more obscure debut album. "Fragmentary Evidence" was released in Europe in July 2009 and internationally in August 2009.

The music on the album continues the progressive and technical death metal style of the debut. Seen from a technical point of view this album is very impressive. Blasting drums, fast shredding, jazzy parts, and skillful soloing are just some of the assets of this album. The vocals vary between deep growls (predominantly) and occasional clean vocals. The clean singing reminds me a lot of the clean singning on Amorphis releases. I´ve seen other reviews mention viking metal vocals, so maybe that´s a valid comparison too. There are a bunch of guest vocalists on the album, who also contribute to make that side of the music diverse. Some of the guest vocalists are Sven de Caluwé from Aborted and Syriak and Leilindel from Unexpect. The tracks are high quality technical/progressive death metal compositions. Augury understand how to vary their music to keep it entertaining and intriguing throughout the album´s playing time.

The sound production is polished, clean and powerful. Basically perfect for this kind of music although to my ears a bit more grit wouldn´t have hurt.

I´ve given "Fragmentary Evidence" a lot of spins and while there is no doubt that this is a 3.5 - 4 star (75%) release in my book, I can´t help think that I enjoyed the debut a bit more. Maybe in the end "Fragmentary Evidence""Cosmogenesis (2009)" by Obscura, which I also think is a great high quality release, but which also suffers slightly from a lack of rawness and grit. Despite my reservations there should of course be no doubt in the minds of fans of the genre that this is an album you should have in your collection.