Band:	The Zenith Passage
Album:	Datalysium
Style:	Technical death metal
Release date:	July 21, 2023
A review by:	musclassia

01. The Axiom Of Error
02. Algorithmic Salvation
03. Lexicontagion
04. Synaptic Depravation
05. Deletion Cult
06. Divinertia I
07. Divinertia II
08. Automated Twilight
09. Datalysium

With only one EP and one full-length record under their belt, The Zenith Passage have already become regarded as arguably the hottest new act in the tech-death scene; Datalysium is likely going to cement that status.

The band’s debut album, Solipsist, received a lot of comparisons to The Faceless, and specifically their pre-Autotheism material. Such comparisons were understandable, both due to the sound of the record and also due to the fact that the band’s founder Justin McKinney was a member of The Faceless at the time. While no longer a part of the shambles that The Faceless has descended into, McKinney clearly doesn’t care about avoiding people drawing parallels between the two projects, as not one but two of the musicians that recorded Planetary Duality, vocalist Derek Rydquist and bassist Brandon Giffin, joined The Zenith Passage in 2021. Still, this new-look line-up has greater musical ambitions for Datalysium than just another recreation of what The Faceless did over a decade ago.

To novices or naysayers of technical death metal, presumably the expectation when hearing that a band stands out in said genre is that the group exhibits an unheralded level of technical virtuosity; if tech-death is built around technicality, the more technical a band is, the better, right? Well, that’s true... for Archspire, and maybe First Fragment. Otherwise, the skill levels pretty much across the genre at the present time are so high that skill alone isn’t enough to stand out, and in most cases ‘style over substance’ wankery is eventually going to detract from the appeal of a record. The Zenith Passage clearly are collectively virtuosic at their respective instruments, but there’s more to this album’s appeal that sheer complexity, even if its first couple of songs belie the album’s eventual scope.

Datalysium doesn’t precisely follow the Wintersun template of having the tracklist arranged in ascending song length order, but it does have the shortest tracks at the front and the longest at the end. Those initial 3 shortest songs (all under 4 minutes), naturally due to having less time in which to explore, go more for the jugular; “The Axiom Of Error” stands out somewhat in rooting itself in slower tempos, but aside from a flashy guitar solo, is more oriented towards deathly grooves, while “Algorithmic Salvation” ups the pace, rhythmic complexity and guitar virtuosity, but still remains firmly rooted in tech-death. The solos stand out strikingly on both songs for injecting some melody and tonal variety in each track, but it’s on “Lexicontagion” that the full scope of Datalysium starts to be revealed.

The promo blurb for this album features a quote from The Zenith Passage describing the album as ‘if Necrophagist and Meshuggah got married, and Cynic and Extol got married, and then they went to a swingers party and all had a kid together’. An interesting sentiment for sure (and one conspicuous for no reference to The Faceless), and while I have to admit I have not found my mind going to Meshuggah once when listening to this album, the influence of Necrophagist on the solos in particular is clear, and with “Lexicontagion”, that Cynic influence can be heard in the departure into dreamy, vocoder-laden sci-fi quirkiness midway through (although I’d be just as inclined to make a comparison to Obscura’s Omnivium when encompassing the track as a whole). It’s a musical shake-up that comes at an ideal moment to demonstrate that Datalysium’s range extends beyond the confines of brutality it initially resided within.

From that point, the progginess of Datalysium really starts to come to the fore; “Synaptic Depravation” balances tech-death extremity with Fallujah-esque soundscaping and full-on prog-death expansiveness in its instrumental passages, while still retaining a satisfying sense of groove. Groove is an important part of the album, and is particularly emphasized on “Divinertia II”, which opens with a stripped-down, spacious chug groove. Other moments that subsequently stand out include the use of bright-sounding Dream Theater-style synths on “Deletion Cult”, the more space-like synth arpeggios in the eerie midsection of “Automated Twilight” and the euphoric melodic climax of the same track (which features one of the few clean vocal passages on Datalysium), and the heightened focus on melody on the expansive title track, a song that feels particularly tethered to the legacy of The Faceless, and Autotheism in particular.

As far as tech-death in the last couple of years is concerned, I don’t think Datalysium is as balls-to-the-walls mesmerizing as First Fragment’s Gloire Éternelle, nor do I find it quite as consistently satisfying as last year’s comeback record Empyrean by Fallujah. However, it’s a really damn impressive display of prog/tech-death that starts off unassumingly, but ultimately reveals itself to be both a worthy successor to the legacy that The Faceless have effectively abandoned, and a solid evolution of Cynic/Obscura-style celestial extreme prog.