Farscape
Purged And Forgotten
Now, a full decade since their last official recordings, FARSCAPE return with arguably their best album yet, Purged and Forgotten. After an eerie (and quite surprisingly melodic) intro, the fire & fury of classic Teutonic thrash is felt - and, by proxy, which they helped shape in a way most Brazilian so many years ago - but equally burning are some new, ever-so-subtle twists on that noble idiom. Without ever quite going fully "slick" nor "tech," FARSCAPE here manage to honorably defy the Teutonic template: a more pronounced emphasis on leads, alternating between the eerily melodic and the tensely harmonic; tiny touches of atmospheric synth underneath the ripping riot of violence, further emphasizing the eerie; and in Witchcaptors charismatic snarl, an equally surprising number of thinking-outside-the-box patterns as well as layering, giving Purged and Forgotten an unusual, almost-"hall of mirrors" aspect. Elsewhere, the quartets songwriting locates that sweet spot between the linear and the twisted, not quite resorting to standard verse/chorus structures nor going overboard into the overly complicated. Simply, the red-eyed & rabid rush of classic FARSCAPE is accounted for, but these discerning veterans arent short on honorable ways to wind their characteristic sound. Purged and Forgotten? Not fucking yet!