Artificial Brain - Infrared Horizon album review

As we find ourselves stranded on a planet run by fuckwits and pantomime villains, it’s no wonder that Artificial Brain are focusing on infinite skies and the grim depths of an impassive cosmos. Infrared Horizon builds on the stormy sci-fi death metal of 2014’s Labyrinth Constellation and takes these virtuoso New Yorkers into ever more intricate and immersive territory. Amid the pitch-black core of songs like Anchored To The Inlayed Arc and Synthesized Instinct is a fairly familiar strain of technical death metal with occasional bursts of Gorguts-style dissonance and atmosphere, but there is much more going on beneath the surface: a churning, visceral strain of antediluvian horror that makes even the most willfully complex structures seem irresistibly organic and primal. The only slight downside here is that some of frontman Will Smith’s vocals tend towards guttural monotony, but the allure of swirling hymns to the unending black like Static Shattering and the genuinely bewildering title track is undeniable. Now how the fuck do we get off this spinning rock?