Progressive death metal band Exocrine’s new album, Molten Giant, is a blistering heavy take on an interesting concept. The concept being that of a nuclear battle between a giant lava monster and humans. Essentially it’s a homage to Kaiju movies. This concept does come through to the sound of the record. The record, despite it’s heaviness, has a soundtrack-esque feel to it. The synths coupled with technical guitars produce a soundscape that would match up well with the sort of monster movie this concept is based on. That being said from song to song this album can feel disjointed and the songs themselves aren’t at an extremely high quality and don’t grab your attention.
The album opens with Scorched Human Society, a track that itself opens with a slow rumbling before thundering into a technical lead guitar. This is then followed by a brief, brutal death metal riff. The riff turns into a mathy jump between guitars followed by a almost power metal lead coupled with the typical death metal vocals. It feels a bit all over the place. While mathy elements in bands can be disorienting this isn’t of a quality that makes you want to fight being disoriented and delve into the technicalities of the song. This theme continues throughout the album. With the following song opening with another soundtrack style synth track followed by a sub par over produced death metal song.
The highlights of this album are when the songs adopt a more soundtrack feel. The second half of Flamewalkers and Behind The Wall are examples of this. The tracks are less disjointed, more immersive and ultimately feel more focused. In truth this album struggles to grab your attention while the idea and concept are good the quality doesn’t match up. For a concept album it seems to lack focus and its disjointed nature is rather jarring.