Put on your gas masks, we are in a quarant—Cytotoxin are back! The German technical brutal death metal jugs are back with their newest full-length, Nuklearth. With the world around us is slowly enveloped by a cloud of a very real plague, this record could not be more aptly timed.
Truth be told, every time I tried to get into Cytotoxin’s repertoire, I was always put off by their weedly over-the-top approach to technical death metal, more akin to the chaotic Brain Drill, rather than the more focused Beneath The Massacre, Rings of Saturn and Viraemia rather than Infant Annihilator. Nuklearth goes an extremely long way to correct my misdirection. This is a well-written record that leans heavily on its riffs and structure, but still has arrangements for the familiar shreddy goodness, without it getting to a point of aural fatigue. Right off the bat, Nuklearth has made this listener revisit Cytotoxin’s entire back catalog, and that is a win for the record and the band in its own right.
Nuklearth is a smorgasbord, a mishmash of many genre stereotypes, weaving in and out of Aborted and nouveau Cattle Decapitation’s brand of melodic deathgrind, along with the tendon-ripping leadwork of Beneath the Massacre (and older Cytotoxin). Every single track on Nuklearth is jam-packed with high-tempo riffs, tremolo-picked melodic overlays, pit-inducing breakdowns, and surprisingly, enough longer drawn out grandiose arrangements often backed with strings and keys to increase the expansiveness and lend depth to an already dense record. Every single major track is a winner, and multiple listens are rewarded.
An entire paragraph will now be devoted to the title track “Nuklearth”, which is subjectively the strongest track on the record, not because it is the most technical, or the most brutal, but rather the cheekiest and most bombastic track, which is what a title track should be. The track starts off with a straightforward slap to the face which is almost familiar after getting slapped around by the entire record. The true jewel is the major melodic tapped riff continuously repeated throughout the track. This quickly becomes the hook of the track and an instant earworm. What makes Cytotoxin’s songwriting so strong is the added layers with each repetition, adding motif upon motif, deepening a sense of dangerous foreboding, while still being a death metal track. A sustained bent note kicks in the main melodic non-shreddy solo towards the end of the track, the writing reaches its layered crescendo. The track fades away with the same melodic arrangements leaving you with a silly grin, at just how great the lead-up and payoff was. If you must only listen to a single track on this record, PLEASE listen to “Nuklearth”.
Every layer created on Nuklearth by every instrument by every member that wields them is the new apex for Cytotoxin. The guitar work by Fonzo and Jason and drummer Stocki are really among the best in the game. Their writing has a precision that we’ve come to expect from Aborted, Benighted, Beneath the Massacre, Cattle Decapitation, and the like, and now we can gladly add Cytotoxin to that list. As a matter of personal taste, I loved the processed and pronounced thumpy high-gain bass tone on this record. The tones and bass lines written by V.T. allow the bass to occupy its own space in the mix and contribute at the same level as the guitars or the drums, which is a feat in this genre. Vocalist Grimo runs through the usual range of gutturals, barks, and screams to match the themes, sounding very close to Cattle Decapitation’s Travis Ryan (who should be studied in extreme metal textbooks), particularly in his guttural timber and rapid lyrical cadence.
My only real issue is the somewhat baffling track placement on Nuklearth, particularly at the tail end. Title-track and daresay the most memorable track on the record, Nuklearth is bookended by not one by two ambient interludes: the Giger-counter infused, Russian-English foreboding spoken-word track “Dead Zone Anthem”, and album closer, the keyboard-driven “Mors Temporis”. The track “Nuklearth” ends with a thematically perfect extended melodic arrangement fadeout. To include an instrumental track after that dilutes the feeling of satisfaction laid out by the title track, and the arrangement does not do anything particularly special to add to the ambience and seems almost out-of-place. This is further exacerbated by the “Dead Zone Anthem” which precludes “Nuklearth” which would have been better placed either as an introductory clip before opener “Atomb” or as an ominous album ender in place of “Mors Temporis”. The keyboard track could have been placed closer to break up the building monotony of the enjoyable but dense middle of the record. This is admittedly a petty facet to write so much about, but it merely exposes the importance of tracklisting as a production tool.
Nuklearth is that record that will bring in tons of new listeners to the Cytotoxin camp, it is as technical as it is bludgeoning. It is as bludgeoning as it is melodic; it is as melodic as it is cohesive. Most of all, it is memorable, which is among the highest praise which could be levied upon a technical and extreme metal band. If the world does not implode into a gas cloud, the future looks as bright as a nuklear-explosion for Cytotoxin.