Irate Architect is a Wedel/Hamburg, Germany based death metal band. Until now, they only released an EP entitled Born Blood Portrait in 2005, making Visitors their debut full-length.

I actually had a hard time reviewing this disc. Not because of the production, which is fairly good, but because this is music which is hard to understand. All fifteen tracks on Visitors are full of experiments within the technical death metal sound. We get to hear slower and speedy parts, a lot of guitar virtuosity and a large amount of twists, turns and other tricks.

Comparisons that come to mind are for example Visceral Bleeding, in terms of song structures. The slower parts remind me of Cephalic Carnage’s mid-paced work, while the well-present sound of the bass guitar make me think of Irate Architects’ country mates Obscura. Other styles can be heard in the instrumental intermezzo “Awareness”, which contains a calm yet creepy atmospheric tune, before the album continues its grind path. During “Seduction” we even get to hear a small jazz influence.

Yep, it seems that this album has all the facets of a varying debut record. Yet, I still have the feeling that there’s something missing. Is it lack of originality? It’s hard to be truly original in today’s metal scene, but from Cephalic Carnage we can say that they are, ‘cause of their epic guitar tones. Lack of catchiness then? The aforementioned Obscura sure plays a lot of striking melodies... a bit too much maybe, but Irate could use some of it, so that you’ll be able to remember and recognize their songs.

Keeping in mind that this is only Irate Architect’s debut album, and trusting on their talent and skills, I can say that they delivered a fine piece of tech-death. A real exhaustion battle. Yet I hope that they’re able to create a more epic and significant record next time, so we can link new bands to them instead of the opposite.