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DISSIMULATOR
Artifice Dissolves

20 Buck Spin (2026)
Rating: 8/10

Two years ago, Canadian tech thrashers Dissimulator were responsible for an excellent debut full-length album in the form of Lower Form Resistance. I wasn’t sure if this follow-up would continue from where Lower Form Resistance finished or if this would be a completely different experience. Well, it’s very much the former, with the trio straddling the death thrash border and adding their own brand of dizzying complexity and spike.

No doubt the Vektor comparisons will arise, more so due to the fact that the American band are missed so much by many, but Dissimulator cover all bases here from a wide range of decades, particularly the zany early 90s style of thrashing death intricacies.

Dissimulator’s newbie sparks into life with ‘Apophenic Rage’, a snarling ensemble of grating riffs and sneering vocal coughs from Claude Leduc. There’s rarely a moment of ease as the trio shifts between zippy, seemingly fragmented ventures and harder gnashing ferocity in tandem with hooky melodies.

Even with its technical prowess and passages of speed, this isn’t an alienating experience but more so an inviting web of intrigue. ‘Alloyed’ is a good example with its skittish passages and abrasive runs, but it’s never jarring to the ears. What’s also a key ingredient is the band’s ability to maintain catchy thrash chugs. ‘Neon Metropolis’, like ‘Alloyed’, keeps the chugging straight and true before the faster change up. Surprisingly, Dissimulator doesn’t actually stray too far from its template, always comfortable to scurry and gnash within a tidy but not too mechanical framework.

Blackened territories may be explored but there are no avant-garde trappings or quizzical forays into progressive jazz metal. Sure, I hear flashes of classic Watchtower, but Artifice Dissolves is nastier, snappier and more visceral and above all, fluid. The title song is a blistering assault of rapid fire percussion and dehydrated vocal coughs which give the band their edge. The way the bass and the guitar work in tandem to build a wall of intensity is impressive because although at first you get whiplash from the tension and speed, there are plenty of deep intricacies to explore upon further spins.

‘Proprioceptor’ features a devilish serrated riff and wiry bass assault resulting in probably the catchiest segment on the opus before the abrasive swirls of ash cloud the eyes. ‘Hungry Ghosts’ is, however, the track that sums the album up with its fusion of punky drums, gnarly riffs and spits of scowling aggression. Drummer Philippe Boucher (Beyond Creation) is a criminally underrated beast who constructs mighty waves of varying tempos on the absorbing closer ‘Robostrobos’, a sprawling network of subterranean steel embellished with gnarly bass flecks and a potent peppering of stabbing riffs.

Rather than being a tangled web of the convoluted and over elaborate, Artifice Dissolves successfully blends well controlled chaos and ashen cold melody with an end result that’s akin to being pepper sprayed with shards of acidic rust.

Neil Arnold

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