Few releases and even fewer exceptional ones have meant it hasn’t been a notable year for Canadian metal. Locally, Brampton/Toronto’s Droid (not to be confused with the now defunct Long Beach groove metallers) attempt to rectify that situation with the release of their long-anticipated six-song EP, Disconnected.
We highlighted the underground metal three-piece in last January’s Ones To Watch series, thanks to their thrashy and classic sound, which harkens back to Ottawa thrashers Annihilator and, occasionally, technical metallers Atheist. Indeed, they keep things classic thrash throughout: the riffs are sharp and complex, the speeds quick, the transitions unpredictable, the delivery aggressive, the production high on treble.
So Astral Revisions, with its experimental panning, comes as a welcome surprise, as do the moments when singer/guitarist Jacob Montgomery switches up his aggressive growl for softer, clean singing, like on the intro to Matricide, a spoken-word section in Chemical Fusion and the choruses of dazzling closer Far Reach.
Top track: Far Reach
Droid throw an EP release party at Coalition on Friday (December 4).
