Vektor - Terminal Redux (2016)

By the time Terminal Redux dropped, Vektor was already on a trajectory towards the stars, and I don't just mean the ones out in space that they so love to sing about, but the popularity contest that is American brutal or technical death metal, deathcore, and such. Though they already had two fantastic records under their belts, it seemed like it was this one where suddenly everyone started chattering about them everywhere, placing them on their year's end lists and starting to take it all very seriously. It's not hard to understand why, because the musicianship was formidable, there's a lot of weaponry DiSanto and company could attack with, and they were just plain ambitious when the idea of a technical death/thrash band seemed like an idea that was restrained to Florida and certain parts of Europe in the later 80s and early 90s.

There just weren't a lot of bands channeling Voivod, Cynic, Atheist, Deathrow, old Pestilence, and the like, and these are all components you might hear in Vektor's sound, though to their great credit, they are a copy of none of these. These cats have their own ideas, and Terminal Redux is quite a progressive offering, from the constantly shifting tone and riffing styles, to the ideas like the ethereal backing vocals on a couple of the tracks. This record is an adventure, one in which you don't know where all the turns are coming until you've experienced the entirely a few times over, and that's one of its strengths. Although Dave DiSanto's raspy vocals unify the whole, there's a huge plethora of rhythmic dynamics here, riffing sequences that feel like they took quite some effort to put together with all the instruments, and a penchant for longer tunes that don't ever really grow too tiresome or boring. Is there a bit of self-indulgence and excess? Perhaps, but nothing that terribly surpasses or even rivals many other technical death metal acts or shredders of the past, and it all comes together into a varied assault that largely sticks the landing.

The lyrics are nerdy, excellent excursions into science and science fictional concepts, which can transport the listener to the extra-terrestrial realms the band wants to inhabit, I wasn't paying attention enough to tell if this was a coherent story, but each of the tracks has so much going for it that it wouldn't be necessary. It must be pretty hard to memorize this stuff, so to pull it off in the studio without sounding too artificial is a feat unto itself, and the production is a great complement, crystal clear but honest and never too drowned out in effects or atmosphere that you can't get to the meat of the instrumentation. Terminal Redux does live up to its heights, but it lacked the surprise for me that Black Future achieved, and to a fractionally lesser extent its follow-up Outer Isolation. So this one remains in third place with me, but it certainly feels the most complex and progressive and I can totally understand why others might feel otherwise. Of course, Vektor would hit a wall after this one with the sketchy personal behavior, ensuing breakup and social media shitstorm, so it's a wonder if the band would ever be able to get even crazier than this...certainly the two tracks on the split with Cryptosis do not compare to this material, so we'll have to see if the writing is on the starship walls, or if they can outdo themselves once again with even more labyrinthine song structures.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10]

https://www.facebook.com/VektorOfficial