Nemesium – Sentient Cognizance
What is it with technical/melodic metal and artwork usually dense with organic, Gigeresque imagery? Swirling masses of thorn organs, smokestacks, skulls made from metal, gears, and general complexity always seems to be the norm. We suppose that makes sense considering what this type of metal is, but is it required? Must you have artwork that speaks of degrading technological and the organic? One need only pull out an album cover by a band like Deadborn or Oppressor to get an idea of what we mean. Sometimes they even get all otherworldly even though the music is some of the most pathetic, slopped-in-a-mold metal you’ve ever heard. Further, this sad reality of art has bled into the realms of metalcore and deathcore, and no one likes that. Luckily, sometimes, you can still tell the difference based on logo style, but even that is starting to become diffuse. If you can’t tell what to expect by the art, ask a few questions. Will there be blast beats or breakdowns? Will there be skinny jeans or battle jackets? Will there be riffs or chugs? If any of those questions begin to arise when the art style is shared by too many, do something new, please. We want to know, at first glance, like a superficial article click-and-share on Facebook, what to expect. There’s just too much to dig through anymore, and it’s getting rather like a dirt road during El Nino.
Nemesium is about as new as it gets in the musical climate we just described above. Coming from Australia, which has a pretty sick technical/melodic scene, they have a lot of work ahead of them. That’s not even speaking about this album in particular yet, Sentient Cognizance, it’s talking about the task of anyone who would try to trade fists with the likes of Ne Obliviscaris, among others. So anyone, not just these guys, have a lot to prove. It would be something like proving you can plant a single tree well enough in front of the power of a God of trees. You better make that first tree a really, really nice tree. So it wouldn’t be easy, and as you can see neither is making an analogy out of it. So laugh at us, but save your laughter for another time after you do, because we have other things to discuss.
Primarily the quality of Sentient Cognizance. So now the intro makes sense. You’ve got a giant, metallic skull on a factory, that usual man-into-machine degradation, with less complexity. And the album and song titles further develop another typical vein of thought in such metal, wordiness. Rule of thumb, if it reads like someone skimmed the chapter headers in the contents section of any book on epistemology, it’s usually superficial on several levels. Nemesium have some skill in their playing, this skill is simply not currently anything of worth. “The Foreshadowing” opens the album, treating you to a literary term that sounds a lot more moving than it actually is in definition, and this is further backed by probably the best writing in the entire album that ironically is an end to the rest of it. The drums roll and churn and the guitars roll, bend, and grind, the end. The bass is somewhere there, and the vocals go for the usual low/high combinations and a few blackened throat rasps to give that extra tag on Metallum, the end. There are occasional, noticeably drastic alterations in volume level, no doubt production errors, but the main issue is you’ve heard and seen all this before. We try to refrain from being assholes around here, but we also like being real. Everything in Sentient Cognizance is entirely ironic, sleeping and barely awake. Nemesium have skill, but it’s currently only at a basic level, to the point that if they develop further they’ll some day look back and say “man…yeah that one…” as you could imagine a future interview response. They’re definitely talented musicians, but creativity is sorely lacking here and the most obvious fault. It’s not just playing anymore that can make a mark in the melodic and technical genres.
Written by Stanley Stepanic
Nemesium: Sentient Cognizance
Self-Released
3.2 / 5
