During the night of April 26th, 1986, a world-changing accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. A catastrophic meltdown befell Reactor No. 4, resulting in core explosions and open-air fires. Moved by the devastating consequences of the event, the German technical death metal act Cytotoxin decided to take this as inspiration, releasing their debut ‘Plutonium Heaven’ in 2011, and following it up just a year later with ‘Radiophobia’. Given that the album received some incredible reviews, it is somewhat surprising that it has taken another five years for them to come back with their third full-length release, but at long last it is here.
To say that this is brutal, yet also incredibly technically complex, is something of an understatement. With a singer that doesn’t do a bad impersonation of George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, that’s an impressive start already, but it is the complexity of what is going on behind him that really makes this band stand out from the rest. There are times when they really hit the death metal hard, but there are others when the guys are playing mathcore behind a death metal singer, which provides a whole new play on what is going on. Why these guys aren’t better known in the metal world is hard to comprehend, as there aren’t many that can mix brutality with technical diversity and musical ability like this. It is seamless, and there is no time to look for the joins as someone is beating you over the head with a sledgehammer. It is rare for a death metal album to really make an impression on me the very first time I played it, but this one did so and has continued to improve each time I’ve listened to it. If you want metal that is over the top in every direction, then this is it. For more details visit the label at https://uniqueleader.com
