There is virtue in stepping out of your comfort zone in the effort to broaden your own understanding and appreciation of any art form. Even if it is a small step to the side of what one is normally comfortable with consuming, the value of exploring new ground to give a more even-keeled experience while critiquing new art. All of this is a vague preamble for my foray into reviewing three new records at the same time, Wormhole’s Almost Human, Alkaloid’s Numen, and Horrendous’ Ontological Mysterium. While I am no stranger to the world of technical death metal, I stick to the more pristine neighborhoods of the genre. Reviewing these three records at the same time, every one of which fall slightly outside my wheelhouse, has given me the chance to test the limits of my own preferences!

This time, it’s the Bavarian progressive/technical death metal supergroup Alkaloid’s turn to show me that my horizons are limited. Following 2018’s Liquid Anatomy, the quartet is back with their newest Lovecraftian Juggernaut, Numen. This record comes in the form of a massive twin-CD pack and seventy minutes of techy-jazzy and all-round otherworldly music. Truth be told, I have dabbled in their occult offerings, particularly their debut The Malkuth Grimoire, but found them to be too “way out” even for me, and largely stayed away from their brand of technical death metal. As highlighted in the intro paragraph, I endeavor to push past my self-imposed boundaries, so let us jump right into the cavernous deep end!

It is terribly difficult, nay nigh impossible to define Alkaloid in terms of genre because any attempt would trap them within the walls of the tropes that go along with it. To call them progressive metal would push the reader into expecting something like Dream Theater, with tons of technical finesse and convoluted songwriting, but lacking the pure aggression of death metal. To pigeonhole them into technical death metal, would take away from some of the smoother nuances of their songwriting. And while you’re sitting there trying to genre-trap Alkaloid, may as well throw some jazz influences into the mix as well.

From the Tesseract-ish bass intro of the opening track “Qliphosis” (yet to find a suitable meaning to this word, help!), we are treated to the deft hand of the Alkaloid songwriting engine. Masters of controlling mood through tempo and note choice, Alkaloid kicks off Numen with a thumping central verse riff, colored with just enough menace in the form of eerily harmonic overdubs. Among the more aggressive tracks on the double-CD pack are the released single (and aptly named) “Clusterf*ck” and “Shades of Shub-Niggurath” drawing from their trademark Cthulu-themed lyrical and aesthetic theme. Even with the “slower” parts, this is definitely among the punchiest tracks on Numen.

It’s on the second CD, that Numen really begins to go off the rails and dig into the true otherworldly horror that the band tries to tap into with their releases. Lulling you into an eerie sense of security, like sitting in a damp moldy cottage surrounded by evil mists “The Black Siren” is haunting with the classical acoustic guitar arrangements; melodic and melancholic, not creating images of beauty but of unease. The title track “Numen” has the boys dust off their tape echo and chorus pedals to create an evil carnival vibe as they serenade us into worlds of darkness and terror. This seven-minute swampfest stretches out low-to-mid-paced dissonant arrangements to keep the listener as disturbed as audibly possible. The final stretch of the title track almost has Alkaloid deep-diving into chaotic black metal with vicious tremolo-picked riffs relentless blast beats and raspy vocal deliveries.

In an endless sea of terrifyingly creative soundscapes, tracks like “The Folding” still stand out in showcasing just how much the envelope can be pushed while still sticking within the confines of “extreme metal”. “The Folding” is both dense and vacuous at the same time, playing with the very space between notes, alternating between severely downtuned guitars to create a horror purr before dropping the listener into pits of silence with natural harmonics like pinpricks of light in the faraway abyss. If that wasn’t terrifying enough, Alkaloid throws us bodily into the void by giving us some Portal-esque noise-laden sections to fully immerse us in the horrors of our own mind, while gnarling up riffs from a distance. Needless to say, “The Folding” is quite a trip, you have been suitably warned!

And hey, if you weren’t already getting up to get some fresh air after suffering through “The Folding”, there’s the thirteen-minute progganaut of an album closer “Alpha Aur” to keep you company. Full disclosure: on my several attempts to listen to Numen end-to-end, I was so aurally exhausted by this point, that I skipped through most of the closer “Alpha Aur”, so it would be remiss of me to properly comment on the quality of the track in full measure. But from the snippets I did get through, “Alpha Aur” takes a much-needed breather and steps into a more mainstream prog-rock groove, which can be quite the whiplash from a very malevolent back half of the double-CD record.

It surely isn’t my place to comment on just how mesmerizingly excellent every single member of Alkaloid is. Words stated here would be doing each of them a disservice. Drummer Hannes Grossman is a titan among tech-death drummers, musicians, and songwriters and has a prolific career not only with some of the biggest names in the tech-death world but also has had cult success with his own solo offerings. His drum arrangements anger, depress, soothe, and disturb the listeners in equal measure. Bassist Linus Klausenitzer (Obsidious, ex-Obscura, and a whole host of other bands) stands much more front and center on Alkaloid releases than he does on the Obsidious release and on the Obscura releases. Vocalist and guitarist (and founding member along with Grossman) is Morean (Florian Magnus Maier) who was the brain behind the inception of the band. His vocal Olympics jumping between crooning clean vocals and low-pitched growls fills the entire spectrum of moods that Alkaloid is trying to span with their songwriting. And then there’s ol’ Christian Muenzner (from every single German tech death band ever), who may as well be an entire subgenre by himself.

The sheer expansiveness of Numen is both its greatest strength but also its only real weakness. It takes a lot of mass to touch many different edges of the various genres and moods trying to be scoped out by this record, but there really is a limit of too much in too little space. While Alkaloid doesn’t suffer from the trap of writing records that are simply too dense, their own brand of sheer breadth can be oftentimes confusing and fatiguing on lengthy consumption. Fortunately, the production on Numen is near textbook level pristine allowing all the various instruments, layers, and sonic templates Alkaloid throws at us without seeming overly crowded.

Ascertaining the true merit of a band like Alkaloid and a record like Numen has been a true test of this reviewer’s balance of “Is this good metal” Vs. “Is this metal I like”. It is undeniable that Numen is the current magnum opus that Alkaloid has thrown into the void. Only time will tell if they can (or should) try to top this on future records!

Numen is a mammoth package of aggressive horror highlighted by dizzyingly complex riffs and eerily casted layers and sounds to keep the listener both terrifyingly off-edge and addictively engaged. This record isn’t for the faint of heart.