Symbiosis

Look up "abiotic" in a dictionary and you'll learn that it refers to non-living chemical and physical environmental factors affecting ecosystems. Look up "symbiosis" and you'll learn it's the process of interaction between two or more different biological species. Look up both Abiotic and Symbiosis in a record store (and if you don't know what that is, well…look it up!) and you'll uncover the 2012 debut album of a brainy Floridian extreme metal band that clearly approaches the creative process with these definitions top of mind. The "abiotic" represents the quintet's fundamental roots in death (i.e. non-living) metal; "symbiosis" their intricate fusion of these fundamentals with other musical styles. Clever, huh? So what does all this mean off paper? Well, once past the morbid symphonics of introductory snippet "Metamorphilia" (think Tubular Bells/The Omen), typical Abiotic experiments like "Vermosapian," "Conquest of Gliese," "Façades," and "The Graze of Locusts" proffer hyper-technical death metal threaded with orchestral flavors and eerie melodic runs, underscored by rhythmic "djent" grooves, and topped with alternately guttural roars and hysterical shrieks of a grindcore pedigree (in all instances proclaiming overtly intellectual themes — go figure). Beyond that, select offerings such as "A Universal Plague" and "Hegira" add atmospheric new age passages reminiscent of Cynic, while "Exitus" briefly tours the electro-metal domains of Fear Factory, showing that shaping and reshaping all of those aforementioned ingredients — as ambitious as they are — isn't enough to satisfy Abiotic's songwriting wanderlust. In sum: look up the general music critic consensus about Abiotic's Symbiosis and you'll likely find definitions such as "impressive" and "well done."