Abiotic – Ikigai [Full Length, 2021]

Hold on to your seat! American Technical Deathcore masters, Abiotic returns with their 3rd full length ‘Ikigai’ and I can confirm it kills. ‘Ikigai’ was released on 12 February 2021 via The Artisan Era.

‘Ikigai’ blurs between being a Technical Death Metal and Deathcore album. It’s everything what you would expect from a Deathcore release: punishing and frenetic tempo changes, fluctuating vocals between low grunts and high pitch screams and percussive guitars. On the other side, Ikigai also offers a slight hint of Tech-Death Metal with dizzying song structures, manic gravity blasts, with progressive and jazzy elements making cameo here and there and surprisingly, classical and Eastern instrumentations (you can tell it’s a Japanese influenced album from the title alone!). And everything is tied into a massive and powerful production, making every instruments, vocals included, are not left out in the mix and clear as day. I can even hear bass twanging in the tracks. And to round everything up, ‘Ikigai’ features star studded guests including Trevor Strnad and Brandon Ellis of The Black Dahlia Murder, Chaney Crabb of Entheos, Jared Smith of Archspire, Scott Carstairs of Fallujah and finally, Jonathan Carpenter of formerly The Contortionist. It’s no wonder ‘Ikigai’ feels like being hit with a slab of concrete to face.

‘Ikigai’ is not just about the band mastering their instruments, but also storytelling. The album’s name, ‘Ikigai’ which means ‘the reason of being’ dives deep into the meaning of one’s existence facing challenges in life. Pretty heavy stuff, if you ask me. With such a solid effort for a full-force comeback, it’s hard not to include ‘Ikigai’ in my heavy rotation and I’m sure you could tell why, once you listen to the album. Go ahead, give it a try.

Ikigai is now available in CD and  digital download format.

FFO: The Faceless, Gojira, The Black Dahlia Murder, Job For a Cowboy, Rivers of Nihil