Band:	Eye Eater
Album:	Alienate
Style:	Blackened death metal, Progressive death metal
Release date:	August 2024
A review by:	F3ynman

01. Alienate
02. Glyphs
03. Other Planets
04. Teachings Of The Insentient
05. To Wish Death Upon Us All
06. Failure Artefacts
07. Everything You Fear And Hope For
08. Silence Of The Forgotten

An anonymous band has arrived from New Zealand, delivering an impressive debut album of entertaining, dissonant, blackened death metal.

So far, 2024 has been an impressive year for the dissonant marriage of black and death metal (whose proper genre name is long overdue at this point! “Dissodark”? “Bleath”? Come on, metal community, think of something!). With the likes of Ulcerate’s Cutting The Throat Of God, Kvadrat’s The Horrible Dissonance Of Oblivion, and Selbst’s Despondency Chord Progressions, there's been plenty of high-class aural darkness to leave fans happy—and perhaps eager for more.

Eye Eater is a band hailing from New Zealand. And that's about all I can say on their background, as there is no information on band members, and their internet presence seems to be practically nonexistent, with only 4 posts on a Facebook account that's barely 3 weeks old at the time of this review. Yet, for some unknown reason, Eye Eater’s debut Alienate seems to have gotten a very sizable amount of attention and fan support on Bandcamp immediately on its release day. So, is the sudden hype and attention justified? Let's have a closer look.

On the surface, Eye Eater play a style very akin to the dissonant death metal of Ulcerate. But, upon closer inspection, they also incorporate several other styles. Slow, plodding moments backed by deep guttural vocals are reminiscent of death doom, while the unsettling lead guitar-work makes modern black metal influences come to mind. Alongside the atmospheric work, there's also a good deal of intricate musicianship à la progressive death metal as well.

Eye Eater values your time, offering here a full runtime of only 36 minutes. The individual songs on Alienate aren't very long either, with most clocking in between 2 to 6 minutes. However, no second is wasted, as each song brims with a seemingly endless supply of off-kilter tunes, intense atmosphere, and cunningly woven musicianship. While all songs here have their merits, the most noteworthy songs that play with the balance of quiet ambience, heavy start-stop riffing, and mezmerizing tremolo are the opening title track “Alienate”, “Failure Artefacts”, and “Everything You Fear And Hope For”. In addition, the “Other Planets” demonstrates perhaps the most complex, meandering melodies. I usually don't like it when prog gets too out-of-hand with excessive noodling, but, in this case, following these interweaving riffs feels like a pleasant, psychedelic journey.

So, there's a bit of progressive death metal, a bit of death doom with dissonant, blackened touches, all merged into a well-crafted extreme metal experience. If any of those genre tags, or their combination, are to your liking, then it's time to make yourself acquainted with Alienate!

In the end, if you're familiar with Ulcerate and Deathspell Omega, Eye Eater will not necessarily surprise you with their style, but it's undeniable that they offer a very enjoyable example of why this dissonant death/black metal sounds so damn good.