Review by TheOneNeverSeen on February 15, 2023.

Initially I wasn't impressed much by the album's main single, "Involuntary Doppelgänger", primarily because my first Archspire songs were "Drone Corpse Aviator" and "Bleed the Future", which seemed much cooler to me at the time. However, "Relentless Mutation" as a whole has been a pleasant surprise to me, possessing an interesting atmosphere and quite a few satisfying tracks.

The first thing to talk about when it comes to Archspire is, of course, the speed and technicality of their music. I can't say "Relentless Mutation" is any more or less technical than "All Shall Align" or "The Lucid Collective", but I will say that the sound has significantly improved. Oliver's classic tech death vocals (if not counting the rapping) are much more properly integrated into the music (unlike on the previous album, where they often felt muted somewhere in the background), the guitar sound is cleaner and the drumming combines with it nicer (particularly at the beginning of "Involuntary Doppelgänger"). The one thing that is mostly unchanged is the bass, it sounds more or less the same as on Archspire’s previous full-length. The overall mix is much more professional, with everything in its right place and nothing feeling too loud or too quiet.

In terms of its spirit, the album is mostly pure madness with ferocious drumming and insanely fast guitars (what is especially interesting is how the solos sometimes sound slower than the main riffs). However, unlike DragonForce, for example, the band clearly tries hard to diversify the structure of their songs by adding some acoustic elements or slower guitar passages (the intro of the title track or the middle part of "The Mimic Well", for instance), and I think they should get credit for this. Despite its at times inhumane speed, the album manages to maintain the beauty of its flow and offer multiple remarkable moments (the chorus of "Involuntary Doppelgänger", the main riff of "Remote Tumour Seeker" or the second half of "A Dark Horizontal"). Some songs feel less powerful than others (my least favorite tracks are "The Mimic Well" and "Calamus Will Animate", which, despite having the same energy as the rest of the record don’t seem as amusing and fail to stand out from the rest of the tracks), but, since the album just lasts 31 minutes, I don't feel like it’s a great problem.

The lyrics are exactly the style you would expect – weird, brutal and complex (just like the Archspire's music as a whole). The album's lines include "eating pelts of pleading meat to acquire their appearance" and "rapidly taking over my right hemisphere. Allocating left to be the prey and right to be the hunter", just to name a few. Since Oliver's tongue, just like the one of "Involuntary Doppelgänger"'s speaker, "speaks in a cadence that only A.U.M. can decipher", you probably won’t care much about the lyrics anyway, but if you do decide to read them, you will probably find them enjoyable. The lyrics style is consistent and I can't name any particular stand outs, although "Involuntary Doppelgänger" and "Relentless Mutation" explore their lyrical themes the best in my opinion.

Finally, I want to say a few words about the album cover. It's just FANTASTIC. While not being excessively gorey with torn out limbs and body fluids all over the place or being another conventional big-scary-thing-destroying-a-city kind of cover (mostly prone to slam death metal bands), it presents the album’s essence perfectly. Leeches with screaming faces coming out of a fubar person’s eye and mouth are... an interesting concept.

So, while not being a masterpiece, "Relentless Mutation" is quite a solid release with lots of energy, epic riffing and fast yet not too uniform melodies. Definitely worth checking out for all tech death fans or just somebody looking for something unusual in the genre.

Rating: 8 out of 10