Being energetically disassembled into datum serves much more than the thrill of experiencing a fourth phase beyond matter as Montréal, Quebec-based technical thrash-death metal trio Dissimulator jack into the mainframe for the sake of ghosting an unsuspecting hive mind under the veil of transcendence. Sedition through the sloughing of flesh suggests a complex, high-stakes war brewing within the tangled wires of their debut full-length album as ‘Lower Form Resistance‘ manages thrill-a-minute display of oeuvre within several points of interest beyond plain stylized fusion. We’re left with a brilliantly realized first LP which presents more than a binary clash, unlocking further potential and avenue per their own brand of thrashing death metal mutation going forward.

Dissimulator formed circa 2021 between folks who all feature in Chthe’ilist as well as other related groups Atramentus, Beyond Creation, and Sutrah. That should suggest well enough that they’ve done technical and progressive death metal of many shapes and shades before but here in this band they’ve taken on a more ‘old school’ death-thrash metal sound referential of the late 80’s and early 90’s which uses late 80’s thrash metal rhythms as the basal majority of its style. This doesn’t mean they’ve escaped any full-bore death metal moments on this record but that their exploration is ultra-specific in its intended niche but readable to both classic thrash and death metal ears. Once formed and functioning they’d quickly put out a two song demo (‘Warped‘, 2021) in October of that same year and, thanks to the wilting vocoder use on the title track, the major assumption for where they’d develop that sound was something like a precursor thought to ‘Focus‘, the death-thrashing side of Cynic and the more wandering classic earlier Atheist scratched out tech-thrash walk of “Mainframe” which’d eventually find its way onto the full-length as well. Beyond getting a sense of what expectations were set by the initial recordings of the band this first demo isn’t essential as we’ve superior versions of each piece on the debut LP and both of them were very well formed right out of the box. The one thing I’d maybe exaggerated when musing over what their next step would be back in 2021 was the sense that some of the riffs might’ve suggested a blackened edge to some pieces but instead these were just riffs and/or runs aiming for a menacing tone. From that point it seems they were ‘ready at work on ‘Lower Form Resistance‘ by late 2022.

Approaching the sound of Dissimulator with a specific notion in mind and finding opener “Neural Hack” chopping away at its fluidly centripetally anchored groove initially brought to mind something more like death metal Forced Entry or an ‘Bonded by Blood‘ tinged aggression a la Exhorder‘s first couple of records but I’d eventually recognize that pre-groove metal thrashing feel as similar to that of ‘Contradictions Collapse‘-era Meshuggah even if we’ve no reason to consider the pre-black album consciousness of those records as a whole. With such a ready-made rapport between these three virtuosic musicians ‘Lower Form Resistance‘ can’t help but duck right into the mayhem rather than take any time to introduce itself and this helps to justify the idea that this is a death metal influenced technical thrash metal band in the old traditions. The new and thriving version of “Warped” which follows the opener helps ease us into this idea which pairs the coldly industrial-minded groove metal era of death/thrash of albums like ‘Nemesis‘ from Obliveon with even more atmospheric drift and meander. Of course the full listen isn’t a puzzle to detangle in this sense but “Warped” gives us all of these suggested ingredients in one glowingly strange piece and allows the mind to drop into their realm easier than the excitable stabbing which “Neural Hack” provides.

Human mind, machine limbs. — With this cadence of progression in mind “Outer Phase” is the sink into the sea of wires, a moody chasm of tumult ’til shocks of riff and robo-vocoder chorales begin to shotgun their way into the percussive down-stroked charge unto the second half of the piece. The subtle way which this develops within not at all subtle machinery and kinda blasts away at it, too was the first surprising bit of movement wherein the cyber thrash of it all began to promise something unexpected. Though the two albums aren’t all that related I’d found myself thinking of Obsolete‘s ‘Animate//Isolate‘ from a couple of years back wherein they’d touched upon some similarly technical machinery and groove but perhaps trained in a different newer school modus, this has some ancient vein of ‘Killing Technology‘ in its blood as we’ll soon find on “Automoil & Robotoil” especially as well as album closer/title track “Lower Form Resistance”. The album will go harder at its brutal-thrash side eventually but this is part of the great expanse envisioned between the opener and the end of Side A. I’d particularly loved this portion of the record as it felt both identifiable but unlike anything I could seat next to it.

Side A has a surrealistic multi-level groove to the whole of its reach whereas Side B initially feels like a chance to cut back to the wrist-cracking stabbing motions the album had started with where we find the reprised and modded “Cybermorphism / Mainframe” an ~8 minute build and burn which escalates until there is enough momentum to carry their thrust through ’til the end of the album. In this sense “Hyperline Underflow” is the maniac peak of the action for my taste, a violent exaggeration of late 80’s thrash metal which is deceptively simple in the chugged out race that it presents but a sort of prog-death/thrash hammer as it develops beyond its second half; As I sat with the full listen, taking a few notes after each ~42 minute spin I couldn’t help but muse over how I’d describe Dissimulator if these parts and pieces began to fully hybridize. Ethereal cyber voiced drifter-class death metal pieces and the excitable flesh ripping death/thrash metal songs besides riff factories could (and more-or-less do) amount to a monstrosity of a conglomerated machine but I’d found the pleasure of listening was the oeuvre being a bit mixed across the span of the full listen. Rather than exhaust with one centralized core mechanism in variation we get plenty of interesting nooks and niches to explore within their action and it makes for a debut worth repeating ad nauseam.

Though the album art (per Jesse Draxler) makes a unique first impression it doesn’t necessarily communicate the frayed edges and punisher-armed rhythms of this album exactly right for my own taste though, hey, fair enough I won’t mistake it for any other album in this style. Likewise it doesn’t point directly to nostalgia as a point of purpose which matches up with the production values (mix/master from Roarrrsoundstudio) which are geared up to a modern standard but allow enough room for the set of guitar tones which feel like references to their taste in both thrash and death metal while still giving the bass guitar tone enough room to both support and insert itself into the more technical rhythms of the second half. Beyond that the drum presence (engineered at Tehom Productions) naturally stands out not only for the incredible technique of Philippe Boucher but for the smaller details of its sound, such as the very slight ping to the snare. All of this coalesces in away which feels intentionally designed to combine the organic touch of the classic era of death/thrash, early prog-death and tech-thrash with their specific interest in nowadays versions of those same things, avoiding a “retro” result but one which clearly appreciates the ancient stuff with a high level of insight.

This leaves us with a debut that presents no real dead-ended statements despite it being as well formed as it is. There is yet a lot of room for expansion as more of their own idiosyncratic and obscures tastes could shine on future releases, it’d make sense to flex out these different modes of technical attack and prog-death/thrash fuming which offer the bulk of this experience. I’d found the full listen easy to slap on repeat and sit with for hours at a time and satisfyingly detailed when given a hunched over lens to every note. Well worthy of a high recommendation.

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