Nucleus: Entity (2019)

Now that Vektor has imploded, there is a distinct lack of bands who have taken the early works of Voivod and based their sound around it.  That is a shame as the first five Voivod albums are stone cold classics.  Nucleus is one such band, though to call their music primarily influenced by Voivod would be too simplistic, as the band is much more of a death metal band with other influences such as Demilich that shine through.

The Voivod influence can be felt through the off-kilter guitar melodies playing over the top of the rumbling bass and crushing drums.  It gives the music a very uneasy feeling and a little bit of the kind of sci-fi vibe that Voivod became renowned for.  There is also the progressive structures that the songs take.  There is nothing direct about this album.  Nucleus goes through a number of movements in each song and there are no choruses or hooks.

This Voivod influence is filtered through the much more chaotic death metal influences the band has.  I mentioned Demilich, and the Finnish death metal band's influence can be heard through the monolithic riffs.  Of course Demilich was a weird band as well without any real standard structure to their music, so that element can be discussed here too.

It is almost hard to recognize where one song ends and another begins here.  There are so many ideas thrown out in the first place, but the songs all blend seemlessly into each other.  The album requires multiple listens to full absorb, something else they share with the eclectic bands listed above.  There is a lot going on and it goes in a number of directions, but all of them lead into a killer album.

The theme of the last few days has been how many great death metal albums have been released in 2019.  Nucleus definitely joins that trend with this album.