Disembodied Tyrant is a name that has been blowing chunks out of the Deathcore scene. Their latest EP, The Tower: Part 1, screamed into being in September. It has taken me a while to sit down and put pen to paper on account of having to reconstitute my brain after hearing this solid chunk of Symphonic Deathcore gold.
Disembodied Tyrant – The Tower: Part 1
Release Date: Out Now
Words: Theo A-Mullis
The Tower takes us on a brutal, beautiful journey through three soundscapes.
Icarian
Icarian opens with the strings. Filling the soundscape with a rising and falling melody, but with catches, moments of discordance that draw in your curiosity. Then it hits. The full force of instrumentation punches you with the power of an artillery barrage while Blake’s bitter growl cuts through the impacts. It’s staggering, literally.
This brutality is wonderfully complemented when another set of percussion comes in at about 1:40. This was immediately reminiscent of Taiko drums for me, and accompanied by a change in tempo it creates a sense of more than mere intensity. It adds a martial aspect to the track, conjuring images of Tolkien or Warhammer.
The breakdown. Utterly mesmerising and utterly terrifying. It hits you like a battering ram made out of buzzsaws. It’s a lot.
Aberrant Waltz
Icarian gives some time to prepare. Aberrant Waltz affords the listener no such luxury. We’re straight into Blake’s roar, a wall of noise, until it cuts into a dubstep-esq drop in the first half minute.
The lyrics are misanthropic in the extreme. They paint a picture of a terrible struggle, of an individual lost in the throes of adversity to the point of collapse and eventual acceptance of their fate.
We hear a lot of what we have come to expect from Disembodied Tyrant. A choir haunts just at the edge of your notice, and there is terrifying and technical guitar shredding and some insane BPMs from the drums.
There is a risk with Deathcore that the music can become repetitive. This track is never at risk of that. We hear a ghostly acoustic arpeggio at three minutes which is mirrored when the electrics scream back in with all their power.
This slows again towards the end of the track, ending as the acoustics come back. The story has come to its end in the music just as it did in the lyrics, with calm in the wake of destruction.
Malphasian
Malphasian opens with percussion and strings with a chant reminiscent of Wardruna or Heilung before Blake’s vocals crash in. The tempo is initially quite slow for Deathcore, with a steady chug. Blake’s growl is backed by a choir at the edge of perception.
It is par for the course until the breakdown. The call to “Begin” is where this song goes fucking orbital before raining down fire with crushingly fast beats and dubstep-style sampling. It’s absolutely brutal and beautiful.
A horrified scream brings us into the second act of this five-minute-long beast, which builds to a blistering blast beat behind chugging guitars with high tremolos that cut you like a knife.
Then it cuts to quiet, a technique we have seen before from Blake. It does not last before it crashes through again. This is a cripplingly heavy song, and it’s always hitting you with something new, something unexpected and interesting.
Overall, this is a triumph of an EP following hot on the heels of their work with Synestia on the Poetic Edda. Disembodied Tyrant have shown themselves to be at the bleeding edge of Deathcore.
