Sijjeel "Affiliation of Horrid Containment" (Review)

Sijjeel Affiliation of Horrid Containment

2024 Comatose Music (CD)

www.comatosemusic.com

I was looking forward to digging further into this release. I bought it early on, but I wanted to make sure I reviewed it. Sijjeel play a particularly vicious form of technical brutal death metal and they don't let their chops run away with their songs, which is exactly what I look for in a band like this.

Even the "Intro" is music, a very jazzed-out dirge that sets the tone and acts like the calm before the storm. The songwriting is firmly in the Suffocation or Cryptopsy camp, with lots of changes, whirlwind riffs, and repetition with variation. There are sick as fuck slam riffs in some of the songs that don't insult the listener - they actually make the tracks heavier! They act as sort of a mitigating factor on all the rest of the musical insanity on the album. Overall, the rest of the riffs may not be as catchy as some of the ones on the new Malignancy, but they're close, and I think this record stands up to that test.

The vocals remind me a little of Gorgasm, being guttural growls that never give an inch of mercy, and never descend into stupidity. This is pure death metal, and these gentlemen know what that means. Everything is perfectly audible in the production, which is necessary with this kind of band. One thing I'm amazed by is the fact that the drums are programmed - I couldn't tell until a super-fast blast hit later in the record. Programming this level of drum performance should be a feat to be praised, when it's done at this level. I've never heard drums programmed like this at a technical level - I can only imagine the painstaking effort this had to take. There are rolls, blasts, little cymbal flourishes, everything a good drummer would want to add. It's amazing.

One effect that I loved on this record was that the bass, on some blast beats, follows the snare ferociously, hammering on the strings for every beat of the snare. This makes it sound intense, heavy, and urgent. Both  "Torment Upon Their Existence" and "Infallible" have this interplay featured front and center, and the songs immediately jumped out at me as special. In fact, Sijjeel's songs tend to build to crescendos, where everything all comes together in an intense way, whether it culminates in a tiny solo or a slam, or what have you. But they do it well.

I didn't expect this record to be as good as it is, and I'm fairly blown away by it. I expected brutal death metal just based on the label and word of mouth, but I didn't expect a masterclass in technical songwriting and musical ability. That was a bonus. I don't know why this band isn't more talked about, since they blow most other technical death out of the water completely. At least I can do my part and let you vomit receptacles know about it!