I was absolutely stricken a couple months ago when I discovered Benthos. I can and also can’t understand how I managed to miss out on this band and how basically no one is talking about them. One of my best friends showed them to me and I knew I just had to listen to II until I’d grow to hate it. You know what I mean no?
Benthos, if we’re all lucky enough, will have a proper chance to bloom into what could be one of the finest bands on the prog metal scene. Their debut album, II is nothing short of an impressively promising start. Hailing from Italy, Benthos started out during 2018 and crafted a kind of prog which brings together lush atmospheres, heavy riffs, scintillating leads, hypnotizing bass lines, intricate rhythms, and a show stopper of a vocal performance.
It’s pretty obvious after a few listens that the band draws a lot from modern metal and is still in the throes of properly crystalizing in terms of musical identity, but they’re doing a great job and it definitely feels like their take is wholly authentic.
Normally I refrain from this type of comparison, but imagine if Karnivool and Beyond Creation had a vaguely metalcore influenced progeny. That’s Benthos. It’s a very plastic way of putting it, but I feel like it’s also a good way of putting an immediate and palpable image in your head instead of leading with some abstract thing. Although, I dare you to listen to “Debris // Essence” and tell me it doesn’t sound a whole damn lot like an unreleased song off of Themata, more particularly its chorus. I swear it could’ve fooled me.
While the production doesn’t feature anything spectacular, it does its job properly given what we’re looking at. The tonalities also work well, although similarly to the production, I can’t say that I’m hearing anything that’s ticking the wow factor or something that’s madly innovative. The real magic is in the songwriting though. There’s something so immediate, stirring, and fresh about II. It scratches the itch for soaring, epic, and melodic moments, along with the itch for really heavy and hard-hitting passages. There’s also plenty of groove to go along with said assault. Along the clean side of things, we also get a little bit of catchiness to go with the highly nuanced atmospheric textures.
Honestly II basically fulfills the entire checklist for a record that’s not only very relistenable, fresh, and packed, but also highly promising. For whatever reason I get really hung over super strong debuts. I would also argue that no other metal debut of this year was anywhere this level in any way. Anyway, I don’t want to dawdle any longer, so go ahead and listen to this awesome record, while I head back to spin it for the hundredth or whateverth time.
