If you told me that's somebody new doing the vocals, I'd believe it. Otherwise it sounds like Vektor (in a good way) in a concise 3.5 minute package, which is cool, even though the longest song on Terminal Redux was my favorite.

It is indeed Vektor! Seriously though, I liked it. I've always preferred the tighter and more concise Vektor songs, so this was a nice change of pace after Terminal Redux. The new vocal approach is interesting, but I like it a lot.

He seems to be doing a reverse Chuck Schuldiner where his voice starts off very high and gets deeper over time. Great song.

i thought everyone left the band? What's the lineup?

Those vocals are such a downgrade and the song writing sounds far less inventive than it did on the last couple albums. Maybe if Dave spent less time drinking and abusing women, he'd write better songs.

Dig it. Looking forward to more material.

Glad someone said it.

It reminds me of Warbringer gone progressive, though that could just be the more direct songwriting and the fact that the beginning sounds a lot like Warbringer's "Living Weapon." Unless I'm mistaken this is Vektor's second shortest song behind only "Dark Creations, Dead Creators." In all I dig it. It covers a lot of ground in 3:30 yet doesn't feel incoherent. I wonder if we can expect a new album soon or if this is just intended as a standalone single.

Not sure how I feel about the vocal direction. Oh, and domestic abuse isn't cool.

Vocals sound like a guy who had his band quit on him ahead of a domestic abuse scandal coming out about him. Pass.

That bass sound is garbage, wow. It's like the bass equivalent of the St. Anger snare.

Great song, not sure how I feel about the vocals though.

No new album yet it is 1 of 2 songs on a split EP.

Glad they are still making music!

On the contrary i guess Chuck Schuldiner did a reverse-everybody else. Piercing screams tend to disappear with age among the vast majority of metal singers. You can find some counter-examples but it seems to me "high => low" is widespread.
On "Terminal Redux" the screechy voice was not as clear as it was on "Black Future", so i could see that coming.


Erik Nelson is back on guitar.
Stephen Coon + Mike Ohlson on bass / drums.

From Erik Neslon's FB page :

I know Tom Araya wasn't really able to pull off the highest screams later on but his delivery did get noticeably shriekier with age.

Music sounds 100% Vektor. It might be one of their shortest and most straight-forward songs but it's still quite busy musically.

Love the bass (St Anger snare comparison? uh, what?), dude on drums had huge shoes to fill and did great. The production is not the best they've done but quite OK. Vocals is the biggest change I hear. I knew they were going to change as the style was not sustainable and the spacey element was already missing from Terminal Redux (I mean that sound he does on "Souls..." on Oblivion), which sounded like standard black metal vocals, which are really not my thing. The new style is standard new wave thrash vocals, which is... fine I guess, losing character points though. Hopefully, he will work on his performance, there are places he can go with this approach, including adding actual vocal lines. We'll see. I do prefer this style over Terminal Redux, as long as I get some banshee screams here and there!

All in all, this looks like a great split EP, which I wish would come out on CD. The most shocking thing for this Vektor fanboy is that I prefer (by a hair) the Cryptosis song, Decypher. Those Dutch thrashers are one of the best out there (as Distillator) so this is a great team-up for me.

This is killer, this band is amazing.

Saw them on the last tour, one of the last shows I think and they were mostly out of merch at that point which was probably related to the band imploding at the time. But fuck they were tight and just kicked ass. The drummer was really laying it down and the guitars were great. Hopefully the lead guy got help for drinking and anger issues.

Listening to it now on Amazon...what is wrong with the bass?

I would expect a new album over the next couple of years. I don't think David would have reformed the band without intentions to release more than 1 song.

I agree on the Warbringer comparisons.

Ever play Doom?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWwJFMyyk-g&t=40s

I'm still wondering who the fuck is CRYPTOSIS

it reads CRYOTOSIS which is more rad

I bought Doom 2 the day before I got my first 486SX2-50. Oh the good old days.

Honestly the bass didn't bother me, I liked the whole song.

It's Distillator after they changed their name.

I've plugged this a lot but one more time won't hurt: One of my favorite songs of 2018, Swarm Intelligence

This was a bit underwhelmig. The song sounds half-assed and the vocals are a lot worse.

I have not heard the song yet, but I do find it strange that so many people were jazzed about the new Inquisition while not so much Vektor.

I've heard conflicting reports about the domestic abuse situation. Some say David's ex-wife was an abuser, too, and he just snapped in return. Reports have indicated that it was a toxic relationship on both sides. If that's not the case, and David really was the villain in the relationship, then hopefully he gets the help he needs.

Yet, with Inquisition, what Dagon did was infinitely worse. On the other hand, somehow, people think with Vektor, it's more important to bring up David's actions outside of the music than the music itself.

Goddamnit what the fuck is with that "pong pong" sounding bass and that horrific snare. Sometimes I just wish generic neo-thrash with clean production would just cease to exist.
Also the vocals sound like he's the one who was abused, total shit

This isn't a bad song, seems like there are a few good ideas in there. It almost seems opposite to a lot of modern thrash - too many ideas packed into a tiny song and giving none of them breathing room, as opposed to not enough ideas strewn throughout a longer song. But jeeeeez it's thin. There's no oomph to those guitars at all. It's not that the bass is too "pong pong" - if it was recorded decently it wouldn't be an issue. Active basses sound like that, they're just usually complemented by guitar tones and overall production that makes it less obvious.

If not mastered carefully, the one thing active basses tend to miss is the part where they actually have bass

Yeah, it honestly sounds like they ran the same high/low-pass EQ filters over the bass as the guitars and left it at that. I dunno, maybe "no low end" is their goal here?

Yeah I'm guessing so man, hence my earlier "I just wish generic neo-thrash with clean production would just cease to exist" comment - I find it all too common that this is the case. I just want to scream THRASH NEEDS BASS! IT NEEDS LOW END AND SOME DIRT!

haha fair enough man. To be fair I have nothing against clean production, I just hate it when it's so tinny, and in this day and age when you can come up with something so much better in your own bedroom, it just seems like intentional shittiness. I guess imitating 80s Voivod is this band's thing, but tbh that late-80s NA thrash production was always awful anyway. It's not like a well-rounded sound is antithetical to being "rock n roll", I just don't understand it.

The vocals are probably the biggest letdown for me...



Definitely.

Love it. Can't believe it took me this long to hear the new Vektor. I'm a die hard that's been going to their shows since before they even had an album out though. Can't wait for the new album

The second track was posted today

Well that was different

The two styles kinda compete in this one and the thrashy one doesn't seem to win... It sounds as if DiSanto is more interested in the "Weather Report" part of Vektor these days. Which is not necessarily bad. His cleans have improved massively.

Both seem to have a different sound from the previous stuff but I'm still enjoying what I'm hearing. I don't think I could get through another "everything and the kitchen sink in one song, and repeat that 12 times" album like Terminal Redux was.