Nothing marks the passage of time like an album released decades after the core of its sound kicking your brain back to its youth. Now, my birth wasn’t so long ago that I’d consider myself decrepit. But when a band like Synaptic walks The Thin Line Between melodic, technical, and just a touch progressive death metal sound from a pre-Relentless Mutation—hell a pre-Incurso, even—world, I step right back into a mindset of no sweep too repetitive, no riff to crunchy or jagged, and thrashin’ about concerts carefree with no ear protection.¹ The fretboard gymnastics across Enter the Void do, after all, possess a youthfulness in the sense that fingers tarnished by the plights of time-based decay could not fathom the nimble taps and extended arpeggiations that adorn its svelte run. Nostalgia alone can’t be the only draw, though.

Having roots in Germany as far back as 2004 under the name Preemptyve Strike, Synaptic’s surviving creative force, guitarist Simon Herbert, has likely lived many of the historical landmarks that adorn the memories of extreme death metal connoisseurs across the past twenty years. As such, a harmonic focus steered by technical riffage and virtuosic bass pops² breathes the language of the melodically inclined aggression—undervalued acts of olde like Neuraxis or early Arsis. With this kind of construction, the hooks lie just as much in the twisted play of Gothenburg-weight flexing (“The Lost Continent,” “Memories of a Forgotten Future”) as they do in the hypnosis of tapped and layered sonic excess (“Malfunctional Minds,” “City of Glass”). Little new exists in the scale exercises that build tension and escalate song narratives here. Nevertheless, Synaptic finds an entertaining home in their well-carved path.

Though not the most dynamic display of tech death—the compression necessary for these distorted tones to run truer to note against each other makes accomplishing that task difficult, typically—Synaptic defies the tradition of crispy rhythm tones and crack-a-lack drum splatters to wear their chosen style like broken-in denim. In particular den Hertog wears his thick-stringed chatter in frequencies that stray away from competition with treble-loaded taps and blackened tremolo assaults (“Malfunctional Minds” especially), all while stepping with a fretted presence that clangs distinct from a double-kick pummel. Young engineer Ben Jones (also engineer for last year’s Feind album) has reigned in well the diversity of guitar voices that Herbert has chosen allow half-time bridges (“The Lost Continent,” “Architects of the Night”) and long-form excursions (“City of Glass”) to land with high punch and low fatigue. Despite the kitwork being completely at the hands of programming (also Herbert), Jones has integrated its flow well such that it took me exploring the credits to realize the absence of sticks behind the percussion.

Between the extensive and studied scale mastery, progressive breaks into group choruses and verses, and harsh vocal palettes that stay within the genre confines, Synaptic struggles to build a face of their own. It’s a tough gig to carve a niche in this extreme metal world with bands like Archspire driving for harder and harder-to-reach tempos, or others like First Fragment throwing every sticky arpeggio and guitar (and bass) solo imaginable at the wall. Enter the Void subsists on smart composition first, which means that its fugal prowess must hit with a crescendo of excess or hook so mighty it can’t be denied. As it stands, though Herbert’s peaks in solo-land find a more smooth, buttery path to the top. And with three of the eight tracks serving either an introductory of transitory passage (the closer might as well be part of “City of Glass” too), Synaptic spends an unfortunate amount of its rather short run here building an atmosphere whose brightest moments ride low magnitude waves.

As countless other bands have chased this same technical death metal high, Enter the Void too doesn’t enter the scene with any major shake or rattle. Given the level of affection for the style in exposition and careful refinement along the genre playbook, though, it doesn’t seem much like Synaptic aimed to reinvent anything. Of course, a novel approach isn’t necessary to give fans of certain sounds a good time. In Enter the Void, those searching for a snappy, atmospheric play on death metal riffy and sweeping will find plenty of reward.

Rating: 3.0/5.0DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: PCM³
Label: Self Release
Websites: synapticmetal.bandcamp.com | instagram.com/synaptic.techdeath
Releases Worldwide: January 15th, 2025

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