Construct of Lethe – Exiler (Pretentious Thesaurus Metal)

 

So here’s the thing, Construct of Lethe know exactly what they are doing musically. And by that, I mean they have such a refined ear for composition, recording, and compelling melody. They don’t just stop at the melodic death metal drudge and drear and are clearly interested in pushing their sound into a musically progressive realm. The beginning with the feedback and the tight plank of bass against each other. The guitars ringing out major 3rds harkens back to some early Opeth or Neo-classical shred showmanship, lace frills and all. Morbid Angel and Cryptopsy make their presence felt as well. For a genre hell bent on sounding as repetitive as possible with the same aural chaos amounting your grandpa’s predictability in the next presidential election, Construct of Lethe do not disappoint when keeping things fresh. Exiler is not boring musically. Let’s talk about the singing though, which is the problem; it’s genre-standard with some elements of call-backs and background that fill an otherwise boring and stale void.

  

Death metal sometimes likes to hide behind shitty vocals in order to cover up even stupider and shittier lyrics. And that my friends is where Construct of Lethe shits the bed. It is a shame that quality lyrics and message aren’t part of this death metal package. They obviously get away from the more played out genre standards of straight death, torture, and mutilation. I like death fantasy about as much as an abortion protester, but at least most in the genre aren’t pretentious about it. Odd medical term sand misunderstanding some pretty big $5 words is to be expected. But these lyrics are stooooopid. They managed to find the dictionary and thesaurus at their local library but that didn’t stop them from going into Wikipedia rabbit hole of Greek, Roman, and Christian history. There are some really odd mashups and combinations done in a way to appear intelligent or well-read, but make no sense simply to prove “this is gore, but better because these are different words.” For example, “Hodegetria begins hematemsis[sic]”, this can translate to us layman something along the lines of, “the Christ-child begins to vomit blood.” Construct of Lethe just fails to find their footing with this image. “Raped Immaculately!” I mean this is pretty lame stuff from otherwise really adept musicians, and they even lifted a fin-de-siècle painting for their cover instead of something original. Stooooopid.

 

Construct of Lethe Official Facebook

Written by Shaol the Indefinite

Construct of Lethe – Exiler
Everlasting Spew Records
3.5 / 5