ABYSSALIS – Adaptation (EP)
Release Date: 5th September 2025
Label: Transcending Obscurity
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Technical Death Metal, Brutal Death Metal.
FFO: Demon King, Fleshbore, Decapitated, Eschaton, Soreption.
Review By: Mark Young
I love it when different bands come together to maybe scratch an artistic or in some case extremely brutal itch that’s, possibly, infuriatingly out of reach in their day job. I think it gives them an amount of release in how they go about things, whether it’s making decisions about how a riff should go, or how the drums plug into a certain part. I guess it allows them to blow off a certain amount of steam before they return to their individual homes. The quartet within Abyssalis come in from individual acts with Mac Smith (vocals, lyrics) from Eschaton & Apogean, Jack Blackburn (drums) from Unaligned & Killitorous (speaking of Unaligned, have you heard it yet? It’s a beast) joined by Cole Daniels (bass) also from Unaligned and Fleshbore, leaving Josh Stevens (guitar) to complete the set.
I also love this EP. Adaptation just starts, and it’s on the front foot from the off. Here we have a song that understands the brief – go out and smash the place up, crush all in front of you and sound good doing it. You can see where the hints of brutality are, tempered with making sure that the thing actually grabs you in a direct manner. It basically does everything you need in extreme metal and does it incredibly well. Everything is just so well done, like they have taken what they know from their day jobs and then refined it a little further just to give it some distance. Indomitable blows up with a fiendish start, part rapid part brutal, all effective. It’s like a love letter to the medium, here is what we like as fans so we wrote a couple of songs and hope you dig it too. Like its predecessor, it is stacked with the good stuff, but with an added break to pause and then re-ignite. The result is a cracker. Pandemonium
is, well, just that. There is a riff set around 1.15 that is just chef’s kiss that from a player’s perspective would be cool to do. The remainder works itself up into a fury that it seems that they are almost playing too fast and hanging on for dear life. Mac’s vocals on this one is unhinged and is possibly the best performance of the EP as he flips delivery as demanded of him. Senescence sees a warmer, fuller bass sound coming to the fore, and it is a great performance from Cole, filling that sound but also having a defined stamp too. They bring in some atmosphere to swell and change their game up, using keys to add colour to proceedings. Above all of that is the guitar work, which is exceptional, including that lead break. My main take from this is that each of them just know what and how to do it, where to put things and understanding what makes the song go that bit further, and it’s on display on the last track, Vallholl which is just incendiary. It’s a prime example of how you can make death metal interesting and engaging again whilst sounding amazing. The songs are great, but they also sound great too, which I think is half the battle with some releases. If the case is that they are going to do more EP’s then I am here for that. I’ve made no secret in the past about how EP’s are sometimes the perfect method in collecting the best songs a group has at that point. I knew nothing about them prior to pressing play, I knew of Unaligned, but I didn’t know how this would sit compared to that. This is 5 songs of top class extreme metal, and if you know of them already well there should be no surprises other than it’s good. Very good.
1. Adaptation
2. Indomitable
3. Pandemonium
4. Senescence
5. Valholl
(5 / 5)
