Death is June - Outer Heaven : "Infinite Psychic Depths"

 This Pennsylvania  death metal band is making a strong showing in a year that has had more than it's fair share of noteworthy releases with in the genre. Their attention of detail without compromising the brutal nature of what they do is what Outer Heaven is benefitting from on their sophomore release. They open the album with the kind of feral feeding frenzy death metal fans expect. "Pillars of  Dust" finds them switching gears with a more hard core vocal style emerging mid song, and things being more groove oriented. They follow this with a shift back into the grind of faster paced death metal blasting off at you. What strikes me about this is how your typical death metal band today, just hits you with a dense blur of hyper aggression and over their span of an entire album rarely explores the range of dynamics that this album has shown in the first three songs. Which all have a distinct sound of their own. 

They continue to prove songwriting does not mean a compromise of sonic violence with "Drained of Life". The vocals are often layered though the main focus is on the Cannibal Corpse like low guttural. They are capable of pulling out huge hooky riffs for "Liquefied Mind". There is more of a thrash influence felt here. A song sure to get a pit moving. The guitar solos are really well timed and feel unique to what they are doing rather than just Kerry King imitation. At just over five minutes they cover a great deal of ground on "Unspeakable Aura" which starts off like your run of the mill death metal then things begin to take a turn when the guitar solo comes before fully stepping out of the box when female vocals create a more atmospheric layer. "Rotting Stone/ DMT" finds them adhering more closely to the more typical tropes of death metal , even when it goes into the more technical riffing of the DMT part. 

While it's in the zip code of Morbid Angel, they got a great guitar tone for this album. The taunt riffing of "Starcrusher" keeps the album's momentum and grit, while not getting stale or causing the songs to lose their identity. "Pallasite Chambers" has more of a Carcass feel to me. The winding groove of the riff works well and their vocalist shows his knack for picking interesting patterns to use in order to place his low growls in different spots so it's not all the same. I am also a fan of anytime I can hear the bass in death metal. "Warped Transcendence" finds them getting caught in the traps of hyper speed, where the guitar just blitz forward without inviting you along for the ride. They slow things down a little on the last, but not much. It does however work better, but feels more like every other death metal band. I will round this down to a 9 as it starts strong, but does not retain as much inspiration toward the end of the album. However this still places them in the upper tier of death metal albums that have been released this year, just not on Frozen Soul or Creeping Death level.This drops juLY 21st on Relapse Records.