Neuraxis
Imagery

I hate fashion... it’s just a stupid concept of recycling clichés fed to us poor consumers until we're sick of it. I hate fashion also because it managed to infiltrate a world, the metal music scene, that should be totally free from any logic of this kind, because, as it is known, we ugly metalheads don’t care about these things: and yet, for years, even among us it seems that the TREND of melodic death metal is spreading a bit everywhere, leading to the release of an avalanche of bands that are identical and flat, drawing heavily on the traditions of "historic" groups for the genre such as Arch Enemy, Dark Tranquility, and with a slightly different style, Amon Amarth.

It seems, however, that this contagious way of making music has not hit Canadian lands, which remain more isolated from these trends and still today are capable of producing truly exceptional bands, some names? Well, Quo Vadis, Excurses or the much more famous Cryptopsy; added to these in 1994 were Neuraxis, a combo born from a branch of Quo Vadis dedicated to technical and melodic death metal that manages to be exceptionally personal and free from influences (plagiarism?) of the aforementioned groups, composed of the following members:

Rob Milley - guitars
Will Seghers - guitars
Yan Thiel - bass
Tommy McKinnon - drums
Alex LeBlanc - vocals

Technically prepared, our young Canadians made their appearance on the market only after three years with the full-length “Imagery,” a concentration of power, malevolence mixed with a sense of the wild, all able to coexist with a constant melodic search that, without losing the necessary punch of the tracks, manages to captivate the listener's attention in a truly convincing way. The lyrics are those somewhat common to advanced groups, with a constant reference to themes such as civilization, the current world situation, but also emotions and spirituality, touching in a cold, almost detached manner, on an important and delicate theme like religion.
Consisting of twelve tracks, two of which are completely instrumental, this album immediately shows us a mature and extremely capable band, which feels comfortable both in the more relaxing moments (as much as one can speak of relaxing in these cases), which are nothing but brief instrumental interludes, and in the moments, virtually always present, when the group opts for frontal assaults midway between the rawest death metal that closely recalls the early days of Death, of the late Chuck Schuldiner, and a progressive tinged with Norwegian black metal tradition, especially concerning the drum parts, with a double bass that towers almost throughout the album, full of blast beats, but admittedly with a somewhat plasticized sound, and especially concerning the vocal setup, more oriented towards acidic screams rather than the growl that is decidedly more typical in death.

There is then the progressive part as mentioned earlier, but the term progressive should be sought in its most "crude" sense, that is, as technical extremization, especially in the bass and guitar solos, instead of a continuous search for musical evolution, since the album remains on more or less similar coordinates, yet remains absolutely personal.
Thus follow tracks like “A Temporal Calamity,” one of the few that manages to find bursts of "cheerful" melody within, along with “Inquisition On Mortality”; for those who love musical violence, episodes like "Reasons Of Being,” with its acidic screams alternated with guttural growls, supported by a very fast and sharp musical base, or even the progressive black with death hues of “Driftwood,” perhaps the most extreme track of the entire album, stand out.
Worthy of mention is definitely the track of classical guitar only, "A Drift...," which with its 44 seconds shows us the more delicate and refined soul of an absolutely eclectic band, capable, when it wishes, of being even sweet.

In this sea of perfection, however, also float songs of lesser stature, such as the flat "Psycho Waves," which is too focused on speed, losing sight of the sense of musical composition and thus resulting in a jumble of sounds thrown together at random.
Another negative point is the production, too confusing and dirty, which at times is worthy of a B-series bootleg, at times seems so perfect as to impart a "plastic" and unreal sense to the music. Venial sins indeed, moreover resolved with subsequent works (recommended as this one) and which do not greatly impair the final result of a product that, while not excelling in everything, shines especially when compared to those bands that prefer to follow that ugly beast that is fashion, sacrificing genuineness and authenticity to be catchy and cool.