This Bangalore based extreme progressive metal band was still relatively green on their debut full-length ‘Winding the Optics’ back in 2011 but their take on technical deathcore and progressive metal was highly developed after just three years as a band. The album was far more tastefully restrained than a lot of the me-too fiddly djent influenced death metal at the time. On their latest EP Eccentric Pendulum have fully matured into their abilities and found ways to shred and incorporate their love of odd time signatures without sounding like every other prog-tech death band on the planet.

‘Tellurian Concepts’ is surprisingly light on the Textures and Obscura influences considering their core-ish previous releases and truly represents progressive metal that just so happens to feature death metal vocals. The riffing is only slightly djent-tipped in terms of the otherwise noodling guitar work and this gives a ton of breathing room for the rousing wobble of the fretless bass guitar work. The level of performance here evokes that sort of off-kilter but professionally executed release you’d find on one of those Magna Carta random label samplers in the late 90’s alongside bands like Liquid Tension Experiment and Sadus.

For all of the instrumental and atmospheric spectacle of the EP it’s 18 minutes doesn’t leave deep musical marks on my mind beyond a great appreciation for the bass driven tech-death euphoria it creates and the underlying message of the music: Caught up in the abnormally fast evolution of humanity, we’ve ignored the deep scars we’ve left on the fragile terrarium we inhabit. The concept outweighs the inherent ‘musical’ memorability of the release, so for all of its alluring conception the style of ‘Tellurian Concepts’ is pragmatically prog-metal and fits too snugly in its sub-genre bag of tricks. Though that bag of tricks include incredible saxophone integration on “Tellurian II – Accelerated Extinction” and some explosive DiGiorgio style bass clawing on “Tellurian III – Contrivance”. This is a compelling and professional progressive death metal album with some outstanding performances on display, ‘Tellurian Concepts’ comes highly recommended to fans of prog metal, old school US prog-death, and anyone whose tastes are gravitating away from the core/djent side of prog metal towards greater authenticity.

This exhausted Earth. 3.5/5.0

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