Band:	Sadist
Album:	Something To Pierce
Style:	Progressive death metal
Release date:	March 07, 2025
A review by:	RaduP

01. Something To Pierce
02. Deprived
03. No Feast For Flies
04. Kill Devour Dissect
05. The Sun God
06. Dume Kike
07. One Shot Closer
08. The Best Part Is The Brain
09. Nove Strade
10. Respirium
11. Latex Hood [bonus]
12. The Unsmiling Windows [bonus]

Do you like your progressive death metal whimsical?

I'll admit that I'm tackling this review less for the Something To Pierce album by itself, even if it is not a bad album, but rather for Sadist themselves. Kinda like how some Oscars wins are less because a specific performance was that good but because the actor or actress was due one. Yes, a review isn't the same as an Oscar win, that would be more akin to us nominating them to our yearly awards, but I was somewhat surprised by seeing how the band's page had no official reviews despite the fact that the band has been pretty active since 2007. I don't have a specific personal connection to Sadist beyond having enjoyed their music and being bummed at them playing in my city right when I was away. I liked Something To Pierce well enough when I was checking out new releases, and considered it for a review, but I have to be honest that the deciding factor in its favour was to give the band's profile its first review.

As a result, a lot of what I appreciate about Something To Pierce are things I generally appreciate about Sadist generally (except for that one nu metal album). So I'll try to talk about the album without necessarily putting it in the context of their larger discography, beyond perhaps recommending that new listeners also check out their classic Above The Light album while they're at it. That out of the way, Sadist play a brand of progressive death metal that they've been playing for more than three decades, since the genre's heyday, and the slightly less than 40 minutes runtime of album would indicate a pretty straight-forward affair. But what has always impressed me about the band was the way that they've managed to have their own identity within that established sound. Growls on top of ever shifting riffing is indeed the core of the sound, but the decorations around it are abound.

In pretty much every song there's at least one moment that feels like somewhat of a rug pull. There an experimental flair that feels overtly dramatic, something that feels oddball in a way that is in line with fellow countrymen, like the horror fanfare of a Goblin soundtrack, to the somewhat exaggerated quirkiness of the latest Selvans. Even in the moments that are most directly prog death, the riffing floats in a way that's irreverent, but a lot of the times that's spliced up either by some horror synth ambiance, some extra percussion, a bass solo, some guest vocal operatics, or harsh vocals going all in on the eclecticism. It's a listening experience that can sometimes feel jagged, but the performances, especially from the newly hired rhythm section, really sell its joy-inducing experimental quality, which is a weird thing to say for a death metal album.

An album with this many rug pulls and detours shouldn't feel as cohesive as Something To Pierce does. And even more importantly, even if it isn't a bold jump from anything they've done before, it doesn't feel like the product of a band that silently retired into regurgitating their own sound with as little effort as possible. The album sounds way too fun for it not to have been a fun affair for everyone involved too.