Review by chrisc7249 on April 19, 2022.

Yes, I've crawled back out of my hole to write more reviews after a run in with writer's block. Turns out, talking about a genre where every band sounds exactly the same doesn't make for great writing material in the long run. Still, I adore technical death metal and I want to express my love for it by giving percentage increases in the overall rating of review scores to my favorite albums. Now, at least one person has seen my negative review for this album and is now reading this one (at least I hope so). Yes, I gave this album a poor 3/10 when I reviewed it last year, and labeled it a forgetful mess of non-songs. So, how could I do such a 180 in overall score just like that?

Well, I don't know. I listened to this album probably about 20 times when I gave it that score. Now, maybe 30 listens in, it just really grew on me recently. Finally, the songs stuck in my head and became something noteworthy. To be quite frank, I don't know why I didn't like this album. It's everything I love about technical death metal. It has crazy vocals, a sick fretless bass, tight tech riffing, spastic drumming and a great production. Somehow, when I originally listened to this album those first 20 or so times, I just… didn't get it, I guess. Yet, I kept listening to it because I was intrigued by it. Now? I get it.

Spectrum Of Delusion have done an amazing job at creating some sort of technical death metal "movement." A cinematic experience, if you will. This album, both lyrically and musically, sounds like the soundtrack to a really intense video game or movie. It goes through so many ebbs and flows, ups and downs, rushes and pauses, solo after solo after SOLO, that in the end… it does kind of make sense. While individual songs are good on their own occasionally, listening to it from front to back and taking everything in all at once is really what unlocks this album.

It's rare to find an album that needs to be taken in all at once to be understood, at least in technical death metal. Tech death is a good genre to just listen to a song here and there and not have to deep dive into the album, but Neoconception is different - to get the full experience, you have to take the 50 or so minutes out of your day to listen to it front to back, and that's when the potential is unlocked. You get an album that flows well, feels emotional and real and remains superbly technical. It's actually probably one of the better tech albums to be released in 2020, a year that was absolutely stacked for the genre.

To everyone I steered wrong the first time around, fuck me, right? This cunt just told everyone it was bad and left a scathing troll-like review, then disappeared back into his hut to masturbate to other tech death albums. Well, I take back what I said. This isn't just a good album, it's a great album and is worthy of having time put into it to understand it. To make up for my shitty previous review (though, let's face it, all my reviews suck ass), I bought a t-shirt from the Artisan Era store and now I wear it regularly in the summer. Stay tech.

FFO: Beyond Creation, Augury, Aepoch

Favorite song: 'Destruction'

Rating: 9 out of 10