The Isle of Disenchantment

This cute little full-length generally gets overlooked in favor of the next album, which was unquestionably their breakout point. Being one of the first (if not the first, I did some digging but couldn't find another decidedly techy Aussie band that had a full-length out around this time) Aussies to the tech-death game is a worthy enough accomplishment, but it does seem strange that The Isle of Disenchantment receives very little attention, especially because it's the most similar album to Scepter of the Ancients in Psycroptic's discography. Not only is this the only other album with Matt Chalk, subsequent albums saw them continue down a much more melodic and wanky path that was starting to poke its tendrils in by Symbols of Failure.

I wish I had a "hot take" or a somewhat unique insight on this album, but I figure my feelings towards The Isle of Disenchantment are probably the same as everyone else's: it's competent, but ultimately an under-developed and unmemorable album in comparison to The Scepter of the Ancients. In hindsight, this really feels like a debut, professionaland well-executed as it is. There's many ideas present that don't totally fit the "Psycroptic mold" that the band gives the spotlight to on this album, giving clear hints that they were still working out what fit and what didn't. The subtle grooving and clean singing in "Psycroptipath" is the easiest example, but with more of a reliance on thick tremolo riffs and less on the extra flourishes throughout the album, there's a curious sonic similarity to early Quebecois melodeath (think Day Into Night era Quo Vadis) that doesn't take root in later albums. The songs are more dense with ideas, but Psycroptic's haste to cram all the riffs they can into a song comes at the expense of memorability and dynamics. Many of the songs just hop from one section to the next after repeating it maybe 2-4 times and never returns to the song after that, creating this linear stream of riffs that are interesting and even have a nice little swing to them every now and then, but never full take root in your brain. I hear the main riff from "Skin Coffin" playing in my head even if I haven't thought about the song in months. If such riffs do exist in this album, Psycroptic doesn't give them enough time to do their thing. None of the riffs are bad, I can listen to this all the way through and not feel disengaged, and I'm not compelled a strong desire to listen to something else...except for maybe The Scepter of the Ancients (and some choice cuts off Ob(servant)), but that being said, nothing on this sticks.

That may be partially due to the non-repeating song structures, but it also has to do with the generally embryonic nature of The Isle of Disenchantment. It's hard to structure songs around monster hooks if you haven't written hooks at that level yet. The Haley brothers have some of the best guitar-drummer chemistry out there and it generally results in some stupidly catchy songs, but The Isle of Disenchantment was the phase where they were still working it all out - the ebb and flow of both instruments has a narrower range of motion, and the drums sound like they have less...personality? On later albums, good or bad, I can hear a song and be able to tell it's a Psycroptic song in less than ten seconds, but Isle of Disenchantment is the only one I might be stumped by for at least a couple minutes. To put it one way, it's more conventional death metal, even though it's way less refined.

The Haley brothers aren't the only culprit, though. Matt Chalk isn't what he's been made out to be. Like everything else, the foundation is there, but it's lacking the extra special something that made Chalky magical. The Scepter of the Ancients features a top 10 all-time harsh vocal performance, and what vaults Chalk into that category is his versatility. He sounded like he had forty-seven different voices on Scepter, but on Isle he has three, maybe four, and mostly sticks to his low growl and high prickle-rasp. While still retaining a degree of distinctiveness, he doesn't have that touch of alien weirdness that quickly ensnares your ears. It's not bad, but it's not there yet. When he occasionally dips into some rapid-fire delivery, it whizzes past and feels more like a tertiary add-on. The biggest all-around hindrance of this album is that Psycroptic doesn't utilize their more technical abilities in a way that stands out, and I think that could be said for each musician. I guess that's the thing, though, they were young at this point and relatively early to the tech game. We have the benefit of time and know what they became at this point, so it's easy to handwave Isle of Disenchantment aside, as it's the band's most ordinary death metal album. Bands will often get stuck trying to recreate the success and imitate the personality from their debut, but Psycroptic benefitted from refining and adding to their foundational sound, and as a result, every single Psycroptic album after this sounds a lot more like Psycroptic.

We have Psycroptic's debut here, and it's unfortunate for me to say that it's mostly disappointing. The lack of clarity from the lousy production really hurts this already lacking release, especially because it's so focused on being technical. It really makes them sound like a garage band.

The vocals are pretty varied, focusing mainly on two different octaves. One is the traditional low pitched death metal style and the second one is a more high pitched shriek that I much prefer to the basic and almost forced sounding traditional growls. The vocals do unfortunately have their special moments. I like to call these moments "metalcore moments" in which the vocalist just sounds like a teenager yelling at the top of his lungs because his parents obviously don't understand him since they didn't buy him those $500 designer emo pants.

Overall the musicians in the band are simply competent for the genre, but nothing special. The drummer is pretty solid, but most other drummers in the genre are a fair amount faster. Also, I don't know if it's the production or just the way he decided to tune his drums but it sounds like he's banging away on tin cans.

The guitarwork is again solid but nothing special. It's surprisingly simple for technical death metal, which is a rather unfortunate surprise. To be honest most of it just sounds like barely enough to get the song to sound complete. On top of this the bass guitar is essentially inaudible, an unfortunately common plague among these bands.

My top songs are "Psycroptipath", "Of Dull Eyes Borne", and "The Isle Of Disenchantment". This album is just not all that great. I don't know if I would even say it shows much potential. It's a passable release, but certainly nothing more than that.

Psycroptic's first album is pretty decent. The production on this album is suberb. All of the songs are very fast and there's not one dud to be found on The Isle of Disenchantment.

The vocals are unique. Nobody else sounds like Matthew 'Chalky' Chalk. The one thing that people may not like about Psycroptic is the vocals. Aggression is the best word to describe his vocals. He switches vocal styles. He goes from sounding low to raspy and then raspy to low. It took me a while to stomach the vocals and now I really dig them. I really don't like his vocals at the beginning of The Sword of Uncreation, it sounds like shit. They start to get better as the song goes on. His best vocal performances are on of Dull Eyes Borne, The Labyrinth, and Beneath the Ground We Dwell. Too bad he was booted out of the band. I wonder if the next vocalist is going to be just as good as him or better.

The guitars and bass guitar sound great on here. I really like the riffs on Carnival of Vulgarity, Condemned By Discontent, and Beneath the Ground We Dwell. I really like the fact they all sound technical and fast. As for the bass, it is clear on just about all of the songs. So you can play this in your car with the bass all the way up and your car will shake. You can really hear the boom of the bass on this album. This depends on how you set the EQ on your stereo or on your computer's music player. The bass intro on Psycroptipath is awesome. The bass is very clear on this song, especially the first 23 seconds of the song.

The drumming is tight. I'm really liking the cymbals that David Haley has on here. He uses them well on Psycroptipath, Netherworld Reality, and Carnival Of Vulgarity. I'm sure he has a killer drum set. He is an excellent technical drummer. I would rank him up there highly with Flo Mounier, Vader's Doc (R.I.P.), and other drummers in the death metal realm that I can think of right now.

I would suggest this to anyone who likes technical and straight forward death metal to get this album. It's not really essential, but I'm sure a lot of death metal fans will be pleased with this. This is an excellent debut album.