God damn I love Australia. Outside of a few select bands, that backwards island nation keeps producing the metal goods. With Ebolie, The Day Everything Became Nothing, Intense Hammer Rage, and others you know you’re going to get an awesome and more importantly brutal experience. Psycroptic hasn’t always been in the same good graces, though. Their debut effort The Isle of Disenchantment was tight as all hell, but to be honest their music writing was a bit bland. They did, however, show a great deal of improvement on their second release The Scepter of the Ancients. It had tight musicianship, some exciting chops, and a great sense of extremity.

So here we see Psycroptic return with their third effort Symbols of Failure. Psycroptic is still going strong with their brand of technical death metal. The vocal delivery isn’t ridiculously brutal, but still bears a decent sense of range. Riff-wise, the writing has seem to take a bit of a Necrophagist influence. While the music certainly doesn’t strive for Muhammed Suicmez’s flamboyant yet awesome guitar style, one can still see hints here or there of Onset of Putrefaction’s musical writing. The guitar work here is ever excellent and is flying all over the board. The end result is a fast-paced, complex, and a bit progressive blend of technical death metal that will satisfy the biggest of riff fans.

Psycroptic have definitely found their strong point with Symbols of Failure. The third time is most certainly the charm and this album is Psycroptic’s best work yet.

Written By: Necro-tron