D’Filer? I hardly know’er! *laugh track* Alright, now that I got the dad joke urges out of my system, let’s see what today’s premiere is all about. holotropic are a self-proclaimed ‘progressive extreme metal’ band from Bratislava, Slovakia; their roots are obviously in the rotten soil of death metal, but they take a few tasteful detours into more outré metal varieties to spice things up enough to warrant more than a cursory listen even from genre veterans. Their own press material points towards bands like Between The Buried and Me, The Contortionist, The Hirsch Effekt, and Orphaned Land as stylistic references, and if that’s not a tasty prog sandwich I don’t know what is!
Clean vocals and spacious, atmospheric sections are a clear indication that we’re dealing with an open-ended interpretation of prog-death here, which fits their modern take on the genre quite well. holotropic can easily be filed into a sort of lineage within the past 15-20 years of forward-thinking death metal bands, but their own psychedelic tendencies and Hirsch Effekt-esque mathcore-meets-indie rock melodicism shake up the picture in an enjoyable way.
“D’Filer” is the latest single by this quintet, which consists of Vladimír Mikuláš on vocals and samples, Kamil Adamík on guitars and synths, Alexander Sucháček on guitars, Rastislav Molnár on bass guitar, and Janko Hutka on drums. Opening on the name-dropping-but-not-really line of ‘Father/The Filer/Sequences divide‘, “D’Filer” manages to illuminate every facet of holotropic‘s sound without becoming overbearing or a mere showboating contest.
This single release comes with a nifty lyric video, which bolsters the musical onslaught with a slew of psychedelic, mathematic, geometric, and abstract imagery – a perfect representation of the song’s many directions, I must say. It’s all quite tastefully handled, avoiding heavy-handed thematics without becoming unbearably esoteric.
As of right now, “D’Filer” functions as a standalone single, but new material should materialize in February; rumor has it they’ve been road-testing it for a while now. This was my first taste of holotropic, and I can safely say that I’ll be back for more in the future. If you feel the same way, be sure to follow them on social media (Facebook | Instagram) and check out their back catalogue on Bandcamp.
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