PSYCROPTIC

"Psycroptic" is the eponymously titled 6th full-length studio album by Australian death metal act Psycroptic. The album was released through Prosthetic Records in March 2015 and is the successor to "The Inherited Repression" from 2012. While especially drummer David Haley has been quite busy in recent years with other projects (Pestilence, The Amenta, Ruins... among others), he and the other three guys in Psycroptic have still found time to have a relatively steady release cycle for Psycroptic. They've also managed to have a steady lineup since "Symbols of Failure" from 2006, when Jason Peppiatt replaced original singer Matthew "Chalky" Chalk.

Psycroptic started out playing a relatively brutal type of technical death metal, but they've slowly changed their style over the years towards a more groove oriented techncial death metal style with "core" leanings. The core element is mostly due to Peppiatt's vocal style which ranges from brutal growling to more aggressive core tinged vocals. The instrumental part of the music is groove oriented technical death metal. While listening to the album I pictured what it would sound like if Decapitated and Lamb of God teamed up for a project.

Psycroptic are very skilled performers and while the core tinged vocals is probably an obstacle for some, the execution of the music is really something to behold. These guys can both groove and do it while playing some technically advanced riffs and rhythms. There's an organic atmosphere to the proceedings which is greatly enjoyable, and which is helped further along by the well sounding and for the style rather organic toned production.

The material on the 9 track, 37:45 minutes long album is also relatively varied, and it doesn't take more than a few spins to be able to tell the tracks apart. This is one of the issues I've had with some of Psycroptic's earlier releases, but they've stepped up here, and this self-titled release is overall a really strong effort by Psycroptic. A 4 star (80%) rating isn't all wrong.