ALBUM REVIEW
BARBARISM - Predetermined Extinction
Dense, traditional, uncompromising brutal death metal attack.
BARBARISM's "Predetermined Extinction" draws quite directly on the formal vocabulary of brutal death metal. The Indonesia- and Ecuador-based trio presents one of the genre's harshest forms in its own style, built around Roby's guitar and bass arrangements, Ardian's guttural vocals, and Claudio's drumming. This is not an attempt to open a new door for brutal death metal; rather, it makes use of the genre's fundamental components in an exceptionally dense and compressed form.
The album's musical language makes no attempt to hide itself from the opening tracks onward. 'Vortex of Celestial Dismemberment' kicks off with Claudio's heavy-hitting drumming and frequent blast beats, while the guitars lay fast, razor-sharp riffs over the rhythmic attack. 'The Creator's Metabolic Scourge', meanwhile, returns to the genre's classic riffing logic after an unsettling intro. Roby's guitar work is particularly prominent here; rather than seeking melodic development, the riffs derive their impact from weight, speed, and repetition. The same approach continues through tracks such as 'Crypts of Uncreation' and 'Xul's Vermicular Feast': dense drumming, fragmented guitar movements, and ever-present guttural vocals keep the music under almost uninterrupted pressure.
Where BARBARISM succeeds is in understanding the physical impact of brutal death metal. The guitars are not simply speeding up for the sake of speed; sharp transitions and heavier passages within the constantly forward-driving drum patterns preserve the songs' percussive character. 'The Architect's Final Theorem' takes a more straightforward approach to its attack, while 'Catalogue of Calculated Carnage' makes the aggression of the guitars more pronounced. When the tempo briefly pulls back at certain points on the album, the weight of the music becomes more apparent as well. "Predetermined Extinction" is therefore not simply about high speed; it places brutal death metal's fast, crushing passages alongside its heavier blows within the same framework.
At the same time, this is precisely where the album's most obvious limitation emerges. Since the songs largely operate within the genre's established patterns of attack, it is not always easy to distinguish one riff from another. The short, concentrated structures keep the energy alive, but leave little room for the compositions to develop identities of their own. 'Chaos in Order' can be considered a notable exception in this regard; its more limited movement compared with the dynamism elsewhere on the album makes the repetitive quality of the band's songwriting more apparent. Closing track 'Structured Violence' returns to the album's basic formula before fading out into an atmospheric outro.
BARBARISM takes an extremely traditional approach to the vocals. Ardian's deep gutturals and inhuman vocal textures fit the music's grotesque atmosphere, but because this vocal approach changes very little throughout the album, it eventually comes to reinforce the sense of uniformity rather than complementing the instrumental variety. This kind of vocal delivery is hardly unusual within brutal death metal, of course, but "Predetermined Extinction" applies a familiar genre vocabulary more than it turns it into a distinctive vocal identity of its own.
The production extends the same aesthetic choice. Recording the guitars, bass, and drums separately before the album was mixed and mastered at Resonance Beast Studio results in a tight framework capable of carrying the intensity BARBARISM is after. The primary aim of the instrumentation is not to create an intricate sonic landscape, but to preserve the physical weight of the compositions. As a result, the production serves the album's brutal death metal identity, while also causing some of the musical details to converge within the overall density.
The album's idea that "chaos is actually governed by hidden order" also finds an interesting counterpart in its musical structure. The imagery of cosmic destruction, anti-creation, and violence suggested by the title and track names points toward an intensely exaggerated aesthetic world, while the music itself is surprisingly orderly. Although the constant movement of blast beats and rapid guitars creates the impression of an uncontrolled attack on the surface, the songs are built around short, clearly defined sections that keep this chaos within certain boundaries. Yet the relationship between the "order" promised by the album's concept and its actual compositional structure never develops beyond an intriguing idea into a clearly defined compositional strategy.
"Predetermined Extinction" therefore comes across as a debut that draws from the classic era of brutal death metal and understands the genre's fundamental physical power, but struggles to transform that heritage into a clearly personal language. BARBARISM shows no hesitation when it comes to speed, guttural vocals, or dense riffing, standing close to the particular brand of brutality represented by bands such as DISGORGE, DEEDS OF FLESH, and CEREBRAL EFFUSION. When it comes to originality, however, the band is considerably less adventurous.
Ultimately, the real question for "Predetermined Extinction" is how long it can hold the attention of brutal death metal fans. BARBARISM's answer is quite convincing in the opening stretch: the music is fast, heavy, and physical. As the album progresses, however, the increasing similarity between its structures gradually dulls the impact of that violence. Even so, for listeners seeking the traditional, extremely dense, and uncompromising side of the genre, "Predetermined Extinction" finds its place as a brutal death metal record that knows what it wants to do and executes it without resorting to unnecessary embellishment.
https://barbarism666.bandcamp.com/album/predetermined-extinction