Metal Underground.com

Chaos, skull-shattering annihilation, fields of the rotting dead, unstoppable riffs of destruction: these are the things that death metal thrived on for the better part of two decades before splintering off into sub-genre after sub-genre. Bringing back that feeling of proper early death metal bands such as Deicide, the debut full-length from Nephelium is a devastating slab of the old school with just a bit of a modern interpretation. There may not be much new ground broken, but it’s hard to notice that while having your cranium explode when the full force of “Coils of Entropy” is brought down.

The music of this formerly middle-eastern and now Canadian act moves at a constant, crushing chug with impressive control shown over every instrument. Unexpectedly, the band’s heritage really doesn’t play a role in any of the tracks. Nephelium most definitely isn’t Arkan or Orphaned Land, and there’s basically no experimentation with traditional ethnic sounds. “Coils of Entropy” is straight up death metal through and through.

In another unexpected move, some of the album’s tracks go well beyond the norm for the upper limit on standard death metal song length. The presence of eight and ten minute tracks shouldn’t scare off old school metal fans or get prog-death excited however, as these songs maintain consistent interest without using major style or tempo shifts. The brutality is always kept up, but there’s a veneer of technicality right over everything. It doesn’t go too deep though, as the end result is essentially ‘90s death metal with a few extra layers of complexity, rather than something fully in the tech-death realm like The Faceless.

While not the most original thing to ever happen to the metal realm, Nephelium’s introduction to the headbanging masses is a completely solid choice for brutal death metal fans. “Coils of Entropy” keeps up the extreme heaviness necessary to please fans of straight death metal, and manages to throw in a good bit of complexity without getting pretentious or overly melodic.