Band:	Sectioned
Album:	Annihilated
Style:	Hardcore, Math metal, Metalcore
Release date:	April 26, 2018
A review by:	RaduP

01. Annihilated
02. Beautiful Struggle
03. Starved Lives
04. Synchronicity
05. Betrayer
06. Toothgrinder
07. Eigengrau
08. Bête Noire
09. Victorious, Neverending
10. Release
11. Portrait
12. Life's True Beauty
13. Through The Trees

All is violent, nothing is bright.

There was a big gap in mathcore when The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza disbanded and an even bigger one when The Dillinger Escape Plan did. Sectioned might not have enough words in their less pretentious name, but their music certainly does its job to fill the void left. The Scottish outfit have just come out of their hiatus with a new vocalist and a fresh need to knock some teeth. If you're unfamiliar with Sectioned's previous EPs, you might be familiar with the band Frontierer. Pedram Valiani is the mastermind behind both Frontierer and Sectioned, so there's that.

Let's get "abrasive", "controlled chaos", and "vitriol" out of the way. You know it's mathcore. You don't need me to tell you that's it's a slab of aggression. You need me to tell you if it's a good slab of aggression. So once I've picked the broken pieces of myself off the floor, I'll tell you that even though Annihilated sounds a lot of times like a band trying to sound as noisy and abrasive as possible in weird time sigs, they also took notice of having to sound engaging while doing so. I'm not gonna go deep into the performance, but new vocalist Jamie Christ might need a bit of variety; for what it's worth, though, his frantic performance is significant to the album's impact.

A lot of the album is wild and violent, but thankfully Sectioned do know to introduce bits and pieces of experimentation as well as moments to breathe. It might sound like a fun idea to have a record that is uncompromisingly always at top intensity, but that reduces the impact of each individual punch. Sectioned know this, so there are always transitions, always unexpected moments, always room to wonder what exactly you're experiencing. The more experimental moments come more in terms of effects added like the channel panning in songs like "Life's True Beauty" or in terms of electronic meanderings like the IDM outro of "Portrait" or "Starved Lives". Annihilated pulls some brakes once in a while, even though the atmosphere never settles down to calm until the very last moment, when, instead of the usual guitar feedback song transition, we get a piano.

Annihilated feels truly revitalizing to a genre that needed just that. Controlled chaos has been done before, but Sectioned are way too creative with their electronic twists and effects to be lumped in with the "done before" crowd. Get annihilated.