There’s something profoundly unsettling about the way Artificial Brain constructs its songs. Infrared Horizon never seeks the straight path: every riff seems to twist back on itself, every dissonant chord opens a fissure rather than resolving tension. The Long Island group continues its exploration of a technical death metal that refuses comfort, favoring cosmic dread over the certainties of the genre. You can sense a connection to the most warped grindcore and the most demanding dissonant death metal, yet the synthesis remains singular, almost organic in how it distorts the rules.
Science fiction that oozes through
The science fiction themes announced aren’t mere window dressing: they literally infuse the sound. The guitars produce metallic textures, cold, sometimes almost industrial, evoking decomposing machines rather than triumphant vessels. The vocals, a raw and torn growl, act as an organic presence suffocated under layers of failing circuits. This tension between flesh and metal gives the album an oppressive atmosphere, never gratuitous: it serves a diffuse narrative, suggested rather than explained, where the listener remains constantly uncomfortable not understanding everything.
Structures that refuse logic
Technically, the album is formidable without ever falling into gratuitous display. Rhythm changes emerge without warning, dissonant riffs chain together according to a logic that escapes the usual patterns of the genre. You sometimes think of a score rewriting itself in real time, refusing any reassuring repetition. This approach demands a certain investment from the listener: you must accept losing your bearings, not being able to anticipate a song’s structure. It’s demanding, sometimes frustrating on first listen, but terribly rewarding once you let yourself be drawn into this internal logic.
A production that breathes suffocation
The production perfectly mirrors this vision: a dense sound but never crushing, leaving room for the bass to crawl beneath the dissonant guitars, creating a permanent sense of vertigo. Nothing is smoothed over, everything seems deliberately unstable, as if equilibrium could shatter at any moment. This controlled instability is arguably the album’s greatest achievement: it musically translates this idea of an infrared horizon, this invisible frontier between the visible and invisible, between organic and mechanical. You don’t emerge unscathed from this listening experience, and that’s precisely the point.
Infrared Horizon confirms Artificial Brain’s position as a reference point in contemporary technical death metal, capable of combining pure brutality and almost cerebral atmospheres without ever sacrificing one for the other. It’s not an easily accessible record, nor intended for those seeking immediately memorable riffs. Rather, it’s a proposition that rewards patience and attention, revealing itself gradually as its twisted structures become familiar without ever losing their capacity to unsettle. An inhabited album, coherent in its vision, which fully deserves its reputation within the current technical death metal scene.
