The alienation inherent to a mind fed on superiority will ultimately render all autocrat enfeebled and dissociative as the structure of the machine, the rigidity required for all elitism to sustain, rots with time and begins to chip away at its architects (or, inheritors) station. Copenhagen, Denmark-based death metal quartet Elitist produce a mock embodiment of the crumbling ivory tower and its inhabitants, voicing their dread through catastrophic and dissonant scrawls as the finite resources that sustain life blaze the sky with acrid smoke, signaling our demise year after year. Their debut full-length album, ‘A Mirage of Grandeur‘, offers a somewhat brief yet densely set channeling of obfuscated, complex and forward-thought dissonant, grinding death metal muse with such intensity that it ultimately convinces the ear of readiness and distinction as a fresh and unprompted entity. A well primed debut for the strength of concept and proficiency it displays and the potential its grinding and skronking vitality suggests.

Elitist was conceived circa 2018 as a quartet between current and former members of grindcore-adjacent acts Piss Vortex and UxDxS alongside the fellow (Tom Fischer) behind similarly technical and avant-garde death metal groups Dysgnostic and Apparatus. Taking many of the tics and expanded oeuvre gained from ulterior tastes their work retains elemental frustrations which span nodes of grind and noise rock which lines up well with their technically adept yet unpredictably pathed style of death metal. Though we could fundamentally view their core abstraction as something distinctly post-‘Obscura‘ within the technical death metal canon with a bounding, bass-heavy and sometimes erratic sense of direction not unlike the best of Hissing and Pyrrhon in terms of energetic and efficient work which is not singular in its spectacle. These are initial general guidelines as we can certainly find nuance in some of the distinct performances herein.

DEEPER LISTENING [x]

Apparatus: An experimental blackened death metal band featuring Fischer alongside folks from top tier bands like Terminalist, Hyperdontia, and more.

Piss Vortex: A uniquely chaotic, technical, and subversive grindcore band which features three members of Elitist. (see also: Genocide Doctrine, another death-grind band from related folks.)

You’ll also enjoy this album if you’re hot for recent records from: Diskord, Sunless, Ad Nauseam.

Excitable, violent, blazing in its speed and machine-like in its incorporation of noisome, confrontational dissonance we get the grinding tech-death maul of Elitist shotgunned in our faces up front per the sub-three minute opening wrestle-and-strangling rowdy of “Propagating Suffering”. If you were a fan of heavy music in the peak era of technical avant-grindcore and its math metal renaissance you will immediately understand the muscle memory of the guitarists here and why a simple point to early 2010’s Ulcerate wouldn’t be such an easy comparison, or, guidepost. This applies even when they’re letting it hang out in the open air, such as the more congested thoughts conveyed on “Vacuous Magnificence” where the skronking punctuation and popping of the bass beneath earns a bit of its own personality even if the species has likely been quickly identified.

While the elastic-strapped soul of the band is going to make its biggest impression on the more kinetically charged, slurred and angularly set guitar driven pieces the slower-going dirges which do pop up along the full listen (starting with “Deluded Fallacies Spew From Rancid Mouths”) lend a sense of dread and disturbed mockery to the tone of the album, most of which is spent calling out the new Belle Époque-esque delusions of the ruling class and their detached, soulless corporate dominion. This is also where much of their dual vocal approach shows up alongside stronger feature of the brilliant rhythm section, particularly the bass guitar work from Fischer (Apparatus, Dysgnostic) who manages a wrathful and sometimes virtuosic showing depending on what any given piece calls for. This role particularly piques my interest with “False Lives”, a piece which recalls the swinging dread Immolation‘s bass work brough in the early 2000’s, particularly when it comes to the tunneling of their rhythms in refrain of rushed-at verses. The best moments on the album set the hum of the bass guitar is its own separate layer in armature of the core rhythm (see also: “Onslaught of Irrelevance”).

Side A builds its musical vernacular up to full strength within its four pieces and more-or-less finds Elitist unable to staunch the arterial spray of its intensity, slapping into the relentless brutality of “Funneled Into Oblivion” like it is 2005 and scrambling through its discord and weirding skronk in an effort to ease the head-spinning rip of the piece and for me this’d been the most Ad Nauseam feeling point of momentum on the full listen, the feeling of lost control without edging away the mayhemic intent of dissonant death metal. More math-methodical pieces are on their way from that point and without interruption as the twitching burn of “Ahistorical Pride” flows directly from “Funneled Into Oblivion”, conjoined and tonally similar enough that those two pieces feel like a complete thought and a violent mood swing at once. We are headed somewhere, chaotic and fuming with disdain but with no respite in sight, I wasn’t sure Elitist had made a deeper point yet at this point in the tracklist, eh, beyond the obvious meaning held within the lyrics I could manage to discern.

Needless to say ‘A Mirage of Grandeur‘ did have somewhere to go in its first twenty or so minutes and in my mind its destination is ultimately “Sustaining Collapse”, my favorite piece and the most viably atmospheric and death metal driven lunge on this album, a break in the clouds that’d reveal a dying sun, and a satisfyingly low and heaviest point on the full listen. The lingering ‘Unholy Cult‘ feeling spasticity of the full listen kinda amounts to something crucial, illustrative in this moment, or, at least caught my ear and clicked in mind at that point. Add the satisfying endpoint of “Onslaught of Irrelevance” and Elitist have spelled out this notion that all empires must fall, that systems of absolute control eventually erode the sanity of those behind them. The only disappointing bit is the static crush out of the song, not much of a closing point when there was still plenty of room for a bigger moment. Still, cutting off the full listen at just over a half hour ensures this spin doesn’t wear out quick.

Fully formed to a high initial standard, conceptually sound and evocative, professionally rendered to the point of diabolic intensity and self-aware enough to keep it brief and punctuative… This debut LP from Elitist does everything right to the point of leaving me wanting more and I believe fans of dissonant, mathed-out, hot-swerving and kinda unpredictable anthropocene-minded technical death metal will have a similar reaction to its wiry and miserable reading of our pathetic, entitled overlords. Artwork from Tobias Holmbeck, whose work you’ll recognize from the most recent Ashenspire release, does well to enhance the vision of class separation, a myopic dystopian perspective which suggests an appropriate level of surreal yet reality-based context. All things considered (and keeping in mind I don’t have a lyric sheet to crib notes from) these folks make a notable entrance into the fray, standing out in my mind right off the bat and carrying some serious potential depending where they lean with it next. A high recommendation.

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