With enviable ease and effortlessness, DROID create some of the catchiest tech-thrash you’ll ever hear. The signposts of the subgenre are all accounted for across Terrestrial Mutations – twisting time signatures, palpitating riff mutations, labyrinthine song lengths, and even that thinner style of production which highlights each player’s performance – but unlike most tech-thrash, DROID create actual hooks that are both immediately memorable and infinitely challenging…and they create A TON of them across the album’s 57-minute runtime. Sure, there’s no shortage of dazzling/mind-boggling musicianship across Terrestrial Mutations (it comes with the territory), but this power-trio always puts the SONG first. As such, there’s a certain spaciness – or, at least, a sense of space in terms of texture – to their alternately hummable/haunting hooks, an effect that’s quite calming amidst all the technical trigonometry going on around them. Fittingly, the lyrical themes follow suit: “Abandoned Celestial State,” “Mission Drift,” “Suspended Animation,” and of course, the album’s title track among others. Additionally, while the production is more “airy” and sonic-sensitive, it’s by no means any less powerful, ringing out richly with a sparkling sensation that simply serves to make DROID’s mighty hooks that much more massive.

Again, DROID’s Terrestrial Mutations is a modern classic in the making, and SHADOW KINGDOM couldn’t be more pleased than to release it on vinyl!