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Ascendancy > Rise of a Dead Empire > Reviews
Ascendancy - Rise of a Dead Empire

Some empires were meant to stay dead. - 47%

hells_unicorn, November 12th, 2023
Written based on this version: 2004, CD, Independent

There are countless American bands littering the early to mid 2000s who seemed bent on blurring the lines of tech death and melodeath to an absolute fault, many of them on the east coast running concorrent to the raging metalcore scene. But for every story of success after the mold of Arsis and The Black Dahlia Murder, there were several, if not scores of failures that didn't make it far beyond moving a few units at small venues in their respective locales. Case and point, Bostonian quartet Ascendancy, sporting a generic name and a sound that might be considered original were it realized in a less haphazzard manner. Though their discography would include a pair of demos prior to the fielding of their debut and lone LP Rise Of A Dead Empire, the final product has all of the production and performance flaws that one might expect from a demo that was thrown together a decade prior.

To put this as politely as possible, the overt sloppiness of the execution by all involved in this album's conception could almost be likened to unintentional mathcore with an amateur rehearsal tape vibe. Imprecise blast beats trade blows with uneven machine gun double kick rumbles courtesy of drummer Seth Greenblatt, whom supposedly has a resume dating back to the late 1980s, and he proves to be the strongest link in this jumbled chain. Then newly recruited bassist Josh Staples finds himself being largely drowned out by the scatterbrained cacaphony of tremolo riffs and spastic melodic guitar lines, but when he's audible, he's largely droning away in a static fashion. Vocalist and guitarist Terrence Herrera has a fairly passable guttural approach with occasional higher pitched material that could pass for a second rate Corpsegrinder emulation, but his and Michael O'Meara's semi-coherent guitar execution sabotages it incessantly.

The tragedy of it all is that this band does exhibit a high level of amateur talent and drive, it's just masked behind an extremely poorly executed performance and an approach to songwriting that defies logic. Most of what passes for a song on here resembles the short scope and rapid fire formula that usually comes with a crossover album, but painted over with a mixture of noodling blurs of notes and occasional melodic hooks that might be likened to how a grindcore band might approach melodeath. The lone offering on here that really resembles a purely death metal song is the 5 minute slough at the center of it all "Forever Desensitized", which has a few glimmers of classic Gothenburg trappings, though sadly the loose sense of rhythm exhibited by each player and the paper-thin production robs it of needed effect. Otherwise, it's just a series of 90 to 170 second bursts of chaotic mush with a semi-competent vocal performance that fades in and out of prominence.

Though basically a local band that probably failed to reach more than a couple hundred people during their short run in the New England scene, there are still copies of this album floating around on eBay. Those who don't mind a sloppy mess of notes swarming around their ears like a hive of angry, drunken bees might take to this, particularly if they have a fetish for extremely low-fi productions that rival some black metal bands from the early 90s, but the average death metal fan will want to pass on putting down money to listen to this, or even spend their time suffering through it on YouTube. Sometimes bands don't break through to greater things because of factors other than the lack of a quallity product, but this is not one of them.

Relentless Melodic Death Metal - 80%

BassLord, April 16th, 2005

I was turned on to this band at a live show and decided to purchase their cd. This is some extreme shit. This band is very fast, even for a death metal band. The riffs are very heavy and speedy and the vocals are ultra gutterull. But despite the bands relentless qualities, they do have a very original sound.

Even though the band is ultra heavy, they do have quite a bit of melody. Their riffs aren't just down tuned low end garbage, they often race around the fret board creating soaring melodies. Most of the album is played to a blast beat, but this only makes the tempo changes and break downs more enjoyable when they arrive. Sometimes the band even settles into a mellow groove(see Forever Desenseitized). The only confusing moment on the album is the rather long blast beat drum solo at the begining of the afformentioned song.

All in all a quality release. If your into exremely heavy technical death metal, but like melodic death metal as well, check this band out.