  
Danish metal act Mnemic are like a heavy metal
selection box and they always have been, the reason
I say that is because they group together that
many different techniques and styles that it’s
hard to really put your finger on a standalone
appropriate label for them; progressive, industrial,
melodic death, metalcore, thrash and groove could
all be used to describe their music. Perhaps a
better way to describe it would be to imagine
a hybrid containing the musical styles of Deftones,
Fear Factory, Scar Symmetry and Sonic Syndicate.
Prior to this latest album, every other release
that was written had all the same members present
from the first to the most recent apart from of
course 1 vocalist change, this release though
see’s a complete line up change with founding
guitarist Mircea Eftemie being the last long part
of the original fold left and vocalist Guillaume
Bideau who has been on the last the last 2 releases.
With such an extreme change in the longstanding
band dynamic can they still bring it or has it
been lost with the ex members?
Pah I needn’t have worried about that by
the sounds of “Transcend”, I think
they are arguably better than ever, arguably in
comparison to “Audio Injected Soul”
and “Mechanical Spin Phenomenon”.
In some ways they are much better than they used
to be but on the other hand there are some elements
that are more favoured than before, with “Transcend”
all of the elements were present twisting and
bouncing over each other but it’s the quantity
in which some of them appear, the clean vocals
are pretty dominant which isn’t a bad thing
but is just not something that Mnemic would usually
do. In all fairness though not all the songs are
subject to the same changes as “Junkies
on the Storm” is more normal in terms of
what us fans are used to hearing still the same
mechanical brutality with atmospheric interludes
from the past, “Mnemesis”, “Blue
Desert in a Black Hole” and “Pattern
Platform” are your true to form Mnemic tracks.
They try and pull a new structure out on some
tracks; lower tempo, softer sound, pure clean
vocals with ominous inserts and interludes. “There’s
No Tomorrow”, “Ocean of Void”
and “I’ve Been You”, now I can
get onboard with “Ocean of Void” and
“I’ve Been You” because they
aren’t quite as drastically different as
“There’s No Tomorrow” is, I
just can’t see that song finding a flowing
placement in and setlist they could put together
at a show it’d simply stop the momentum,
there’s certainly a heavier metalcore influence
here than with past albums like the insanely powerful
“Audio Injected Soul”, but when the
past couple of albums and in fact last few years
haven’t been great in the Mnemic camp this
new output has definitely boosted them up to a
point where they can regain some status.
3.5/5
Review by James Webb
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