Review by Nathan on July 22, 2024.

Believe me, I'm just as stoked that this dropped as the next guy is. I first heard of this band back when Black Future was making waves, and it cemented Vektor's status as a diamond in the vast chasm of shit that is rethrash. Outer Isolation only built on the expectations I had, being even more ambitious and technical than the debut. There were these huge, intricate buildups in songs like "Cosmic Cortex", but they still knew when to throw in some concise, face-melting thrash like "Tetrastructural Minds". They kept the thrash core and just expanded on the unique riff-writing sense they showed on the debut, and the result was a sophomore album that actually exceeded expectations. That is astonishingly rare and made me excited--being a Vektor fan right now means you're following a talented and original band in their prime years of growth and development. You can tell they've got plenty left in the tank and that's something to get yourself hyped as fuck about, especially in the mostly stagnant realm of thrash metal. Hell, they've been instrumental in keeping the retro-thrash thing afloat (albeit barely) through all these years as trends come and go.

Vektor's potential being what it is, my expectations for their upcoming third album were astronomically high. I raised the bar even higher for this album, since, well they already raised it once themselves with Outer Isolation. Sure enough, Vektor did what an avid listener of the band would expect--they took all the quirky, proggy elements that set them apart from the riffraff of rethrash and gave them a little more spotlight on Terminal Redux. This is hands down Vektor's most ambitious, dense and complex album to date. There's more riffs, more things crammed into the riffs, more atmospheric diversions--and to top it all off, DiSanto even shows off his singing voice a little bit. Put it all together, and the intent is clear: to go farther and harder than any other Vektor albums have ever gone before.

Does it work? Eh, yes and no. This is still Vektor, thankfully enough. They have kept the core riffing style that makes them a good band intact, they've kept the songwriting skills and musicianship that make them a great band intact as well, but what's missing is that touch of the exceptional. They're certainly trying to obtain it, no doubt, but the more Vektor forces it, the less it reveals itself.

I think a lot of my issues with this album lay in how the tracks were ordered. "Charging the Void", a nine-minute behemoth that throws everything and the kitchen sink at you right off the bat (including some tremolo riffing that sounds reminiscent of modern black metal a la Krallice), has no business being the opener to the album. I know that seems like a really minute complaint, but it really throws off how the rest of Terminal Redux plays out. It's by far the most complex, diverse and challenging song on the album, so it feels like the band blows their load way too early, making the rest of the album feel less spectacular. "Cygnus Terminal" is paced much more steadily and grows a lot slower, so I really don't see why they didn't just make that the opener and stick "Charging the Void" somewhere in the middle. Maybe they were worried that "Cygnus Terminal" has a similar sort of structural build that "Cosmic Cortex" does? Who knows. I think if they put "Charging the Void" right before "Ultimate Artificer" that would have been ideal, because then the album would go from "Mountains Above the Sun" into a massive two-song display of riff fuckery.

My problems with how the album flows likely just stem from the bigger qualm I have about Terminal Redux: the technical stuff isn't nearly as good as I would have hoped. I've never had a problem with it before, but while turning the leads up to 11 when they were already at 10, Vektor borrowed a lot from modern postblack. The aforementioned Krallice is definitely comparable aesthetically at certain times, and any time the riffs are tremolo'd and higher up on the fretboard they tend to remind me of a more playful Bosse-de-Nage. I may just be hearing that because I'm quite familiar with postblack and less familiar with modern prog-thrash, but at the end of the day Vektor's always had a hint of black metal dotting their sound and it's more prominent than it ever has been on Terminal Redux. Normally additional black metal in a band's sound would leave me jumping for joy, but it doesn't work as well melded with the technicality of Vektor's music.

Thus, we arrive at the locus of the problem. Amidst carefully integrating outside influences, writing these chaotic, sprawling epics and giving everything an otherworldly sci-fi sort of vibe, Vektor forgot to do one thing: thrash. They're still ostensibly a thrash metal band, but the parts of this album that are straight-up definitive Thrash Fucking Metal tend to serve more as the transitions into the cosmic atmospheres, hyperspeed Schuldineresque noodling and Krallice riffs. Sure, I said earlier that everything that makes Vektor a great band is still present in some form on Terminal Redux; but somewhere along the way, Vektor forgot that they were originally a thrash band. You could see on Outer Isolation that they were beginning to evolve into something else entirely, and Terminal Redux has an extra degree of separation from that thrashy core. There's certainly a lot of stuff going on in the riffs, and many are decidedly thrash metal when abstracted from the bigger picture, but the classic 80s vibe that moments like the beginning of "Oblivion" gave you are completely absent at this point in the band's career. I can't help but feel that, despite my mostly disparaging sentiments towards rethrash, the lack of thrashiness on Terminal Redux is to the detriment of the album as a whole.

Fortunately, it's not just the flashy technical stuff that's been given more time and care. Vektor is surprisingly excellent at crafting some serious feels (it's probably the most underrated aspect of the band) and they've given the ballads plenty of time to breathe on this album. Clean vocals appear in traces in the opening track, but they really come into their own on "Collapse" and though DiSanto isn't operatically trained or anything like that he holds down the fort. "Collapse" is probably my favorite track on the album, actually--it's like a better version of "Accelerating Universe", and that song was already fucking excellent with its long-ass build into some really emotional thrash. It doesn't overstay its welcome and provides a nice change of pace by the time "Recharging the Void" comes around, and shit, when "Collapse" really starts picking up I was actually fighting back a tear or two.

In general, the latter half of this album is much stronger than the former. Seems like they were really excited to get all the new ideas and crazy wank out right away, and Terminal Redux is very technically impressive right off the bat, but for my money the album becomes a lot more enjoyable once "Psychotropia" comes in and steadies the pace just a tad, and it only gets better from there. Am I going to tell you that you shouldn't check out this album? No. You should definitely check this out. This is one of those rare bands that's brilliant in a stale genre and they're right around their creative peak, so yes, you should absolutely check this out. All of the performances are spot on, as the band has only gotten better in terms of their playing ability. Blake Anderson is a fucking maniac and continues to make pretty much anything Vektor writes sound intense as fuck. If you want to hear just how much Blake contributes to the band with his drumming, go pull up the demo version of "Tetrastructural Minds" they recorded when he wasn't in the band yet. No offense to the old drummer, he holds it down fine, but you can tell there's just so much more going on in Blake's version.

I will say, however, that if you're new to the band, you should probably give their first two albums a spin before you try out this one. Not only will you have a better understanding of where Terminal Redux is coming from, but it will be easier to see why it doesn't quite reach the bar that Outer Isolation set. This is still good and all, but it's the weakest Vektor full-length and I can already feel myself turning into that lame elitist who only likes the first two albums.

Rating: 7.8 out of 10