Capsized, drowned, and dragged into the bone-gnawing echo of their watery lair Berkeley, California-based technical death metal trio Fabricant are the poison-limbed otherworldly primal intelligence that’d consume the unwitting traveler unlucky enough to wash upon the siphoning marshes of their debut full-length album. ‘Drudge to the Thicket‘ spells out the cyclic ruin the listener will face in its throes in frightening detail, speaking in tongues they’d interpreted down from old decrepit masters cutting riff after riff in poetic mastery of wriggling tech-fingered voicing unheard of most anywhere else. Never weirding for the sake of it and unwilling to crack into the dryly-geared tropes of machine grooved tech-death this result is organically achieved, monstrous and adept beyond belief as these folks fashion a gnarled black mirror back upon human hubris.

Formed as a duo circa 2010 Fabricant would originally feature two members from the then defunct formative version Mefitis, this project being more intently focused on their interest in death metal. The quick result of their efforts, ‘Demo 2010‘, was very well received at a time when the crunching chrome of earlier Deeds of Flesh was missed and the love of classic, weirding technical death metal wasn’t yet a full-blown feature of the internet savvy death metal underground. The way I’d originally seen the band at a demo stage was the marriage of the brutal atmospheric trench of Timeghoul still in the process of being resurrected, a high standard of musicianship per the late 2000’s instilled, and the wrenching guts of Demilich at the heart of permutation (see: “Staring at the Imprisoned”.) Rather than associate Fabricant with the natural result of those ideas (Diskord, more-or-less) they’d been set in the timeline after Zealotry‘s first demo but before the more blatant Chthe’ilist and well before better known acts (see also: Blood Incantation, Nucleus et al.) who were still in very formative stages. Though we cannot flatly draw a line between any artist mentioned and the work found on the worship-void ‘Drudge to the Thicket‘ the origins of the band are rooted in similar foundations of ‘old school’ tech-death.

In truth that first demo was more advanced than any perceived peers at the time, likely that ready for consumption per the years put into Mefitis beforehand as each band features the foundation of drummer Pendath, a meticulous and intense composer even as a teenager, as evidenced by the interstitial digital single “Drudge to the Thicket” (2010), one of two ancient pieces (see also: posthumous “Disjunct” (2017)) which’ve been largely preserved in form on ‘Drudge to the Thicket‘. With the project split-up/on hiatus beyond 2014 of course Pendath‘s other band would go on to release two of the best albums of the last several years (2019, 2021 respectively) thus causing some intense hype generation on my part being such a fan of Fabricant‘s first demo and the high-potential realized within their related projects. Does this mean you’ll find something on the level of ‘Offscourings‘ here? Yes, that insanely high level of compositional brilliance albeit a far more directly technical death metal intervention.

Where does technical death metal most often fail the thinking -and- feeling audience? The rhythm section is by far the culprit, too often given machine grade commands to memorize with hiked-up shoulders rather than reactive fluidity and maybe relenting for the sake of motorik use of jazz-fusion tenets. In Fabricant‘s hands the organische pulse of their work serves conversational phrases in repeated bursts, verbose and dynamic enough to match the statements made in the lyrics themselves (“Prey to Whom”). Consider this less a result of showing off their understanding of the mechanism of extreme metal and moreso challenging themselves at every turn, much like we’d seen in the later stages of Anata‘s work here we find stylized lead guitar driven scrambling in tightened phrase as the central voice atop the rhythms, often composing in polyrhythm but not with typified dissonance or disarrayed thought (“Eloper’s Revelations”, “Song of Stillness”). The living and breathing engine deployed focuses on highly indulgent drum fills, tightened displays of speed, some lightened use of repetition even compared to the demo stages of the group and a refreshingly physical growl-and-snap to the bass guitar presence, per Ryan Daugherty, to keep up with and accentuate the frequently shifting goalpost of each song. Though there are grooves and head-bopping bits strewn across Side A of ‘Drudge to the Thicket‘ the greater effect of even just a couple of sessions in preview is a brain-itching swelling of the central processor.

If that’d not been enough of a progress check after ten years then a direct side-by-side with this newer, far superior version of “Disjunct” to end the first half of the album should signal to old fans that they’ve not simply picked their old material back up but re-envisioned the possibilities of their sound and made more than paraphernalia with it. Still, this piece does ultimately hit at the sharper angles of Fabricant‘s earliest work. What does ‘Drudge to the Thicket‘ have to offer over on Side B that feels additive, contiguous, worthy in progression beyond the already dense and impressive strokes of the first half? In fact the first half appeared to “make good” on the promise of the band in hindsight, showcasing a nowadays and fully professional realization of an already ahead of its time conception in development in one way or another for ten years.

The second half of the album is even more dense with activity and increasingly exploratory with rhythm and atmospheric reach as it tunnels deeper-in. Hitting “Borderland Vigil” and its jolt of black-venomed vocals and scraping fast speed does bring to mind the needled thrum and transitional juxtapositions of ‘Offscourings‘ to some degree but the dissonant punctuation of each run in rapid succession builds something entirely different in effect and “Adrift the Sleepless Swamp” continues this back-and-forth conversation with lower intensity, instead opting for wide-open phrases that are bopped and battered around by the rhythm section in the background. The effect of the latter piece recalls the recension at the end of the first demo, an adrift sense of movement I’d like to hear more of. Of course the title track (“Drudge to the Thicket“) must make itself known as a well-liked piece of prime work from the band’s early years and interestingly enough they’ve not changed the form of the song as much as they’d reconfigured parts of “Disjunct”, instead opting to quantize the result down to sharper precision/timing and leave the maddening sway and the dissonant guitar harmonies of the piece well intact. This would’ve been a fine enough point of exit ’til “Until the Heavens Grow Dark” asserted itself as the opus at the end, reinforcing the whole of the journey.

Well thought and on a quickened rampage to the point of nearly overstating itself by the end the full listen of ‘Drudge to the Thicket‘ is satisfyingly engrossing, immersive in its creeping and groaning movements which are all the more dramatic when observed piecemeal but glom into one mind-bending force as a complete album. Amidst the constantly swerving nausea Fabricant generate they’ve done well to avoid any too-typical or traditional tropes by side-stepping any hard-cut angled motions ad nauseam and keeping themselves upstream of pieces which are directly beauteous or referential. Knowing the extra polish and precision of the perfectionist’s hand through their other work will arguably prepare the greater prog/tech-death fandom for the unique voice of the artist and while I’d initially wanted more of a separation ultimately the progressive uptick of density beyond the freneticism of the first half took my mind off of this quickly and deep into scene. A very high recommendation.

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