ÆNIGMATUM: INFINITUDE’S PASSAGE
20 BUCK SPIN
LP | CD | DL
CD | DL Out Now (VINYL SEPTEMBER 4)
Portland Tech-Death savants Ænigmatum release their third LP: Infinitude’s Passage. 42 minutes chock-full of adventurous riffing, time-changes and intricate experimentation framed upon a cohesive but broadminded Death Metal canvas. Sean Millard puts down his brushes, squints his one good eye, strokes his chin and considers the band’s own unique perspective and how that affects his own.
This type of stuff isn’t typically covered in the press anymore, but I’m hoping to change that. At LTW, at least. Because to my ears, Black and Death Metal, in all its wondrous forms, is where many of the real treasures lie in contemporary music. Trouble is, those genres are too easily dismissed or overlooked as serious contenders for The Good Stuff because of their unappealing reputation(s) to the average discerning listener. But it’s not all church burnings, gorefests and unintelligible vocals. I promise.
So; I’ve taken it upon myself to unsheathe the Sacring Bell I stole from the still-smoking-ashes of my local All Saints Church, and begin tolling it from within, at anyone who’ll listen. I stand, like a leprous Town Crier, complete with hessian hood and meaty complexion: “Here ye! Here ye! Come far! Come wide! Come back, dammit! Because there’s some cool shit to listen to here that you almost definitely will have ignored otherwise!”
Call me naïve. It’s probably much deserved, but Ænigmatum had entirely escaped my attention until a serendipitous sweeping review snagged my ever-lovin’ ear holes on YouTube recently. And from that moment… well; colour me hooked.
This much I know: Ænigmatum is Latin. It translates as “of enigma”; of puzzles, mysteries and riddles. I like that. It conveys their musicality well. The four-piece band formed in 2017 and hail from Portland, Oregon. That’s in the Ununited States of America. Go west, young man. Don’t stop ‘til you hit landfall. And then keep going.
The band comprises of the following members: Kelly McLaughlin, Vocals/Guitar. Previously involved with Blood of Martyrs, a particularly obscure US Black Metal band from the noughties. Check out their debut, Ex Nihilo, on YouTube. You won’t find it anywhere else. It is something of a lost banger.
Eli Lundgren is the other guitarist, Pierce Williams the drummer, and Brian Rush, who appears to be an incredibly busy boy, on bass. 
Infinitude’s Passage is their third full length LP. 20 Buck Spin snapped them up following the (very) cult success of 2019’s self-titled debut. They then released the wonderful Deconsecrate in 2021. So; Infinitude’s Passage been five years in the making. I don’t know why it’s taken so long. They’ve been pre-occupied, presumably. But this surprise release has got everyone buzzing.
There’s something immediately different about Ænigmatum. It’s how they caught my attention so quickly and, if you’re even remotely interested in Death Metal, I’m sure they’ll do the same for you. Their approach feels more compelling and refined than most. Their playing is intricate, complex and engaging, without being flamboyant and ostentatious. The soloing is kept to a minimum. They focus more on time changes, cadence switching and the nuance of the riffs.
They’re also not so deeply Death Metal that they’re constraining an audience to just the hardcore. There’s a bit of Black Metal in there; the vocals aren’t Cookie Monster growls; they’re more mid-range than that. They forego the bludgeon of brutality for a dancing and darting musicality that continues to deliver unexpected auditory gifts after repeated listens.
It’s accessible in its own way and is progressive without being prog. It’s not aimed at musos. It is complexity delivered in a way that makes you grin, not stroke your chin. What Mastodon do for more conventional Metal, Ænigmatum do for Death. For me, at least. They’re not showing off, they can just really play and obviously love creating challenging riffage.
Spending a little time – well, at least, the first few hours of what is bound to become a long-term dedication to the Ænigmatum’s back catalogue – and it’s easy to hear the evolution of the band’s sound across all three of their LPs. The songwriting has become more coherent and driven, with skronky prog stuff finding a more discreet place to sit within the compositions, meaning it underpins and supports, rather than dominates proceedings, which could, for me, become quite off-putting.
I fall on the side of quite intensely disliking the latest Tomb Mold stylings, for instance. They’ve cleaned up and now they meander too much. They have lost the Death Metal cool that I found attractive in their earlier work. It’s not what I go to them for. Ænigmatum find the perfect balance between progressive playing and ear-worming coherence. It’s a rare thing to pitch well and they pull it off with aplomb. Which is a relief. They have managed to achieve what Tomb Mold failed at.
Balance is a useful way to approach what makes Infinitude’s Passage so successful. The songs are darkly melodic without being sickeningly saccharine. You barely notice how tuneful they are; sometimes an even slightly over-melodious approach can completely annihilate a record for me, but Ænigmatum strike a balance that really fucking works. The album is addictive and compulsively tuneful; it doesn’t get so brutal that your attention drifts away and it doesn’t get so light that you switch the damn thing off.
The musicians are so skilled and aligned on what they are trying to achieve that another way the writing is balanced is in its complexity. Every strike of a string or beat of a skin seems layered in nuance and non-repeating depth. Yet the complexity is never baffling or over-whelming. It always serves the songs.
Even the solos, which traditionally I am no fan of, especially in Tech-Death as a genre (they can often feel shoe-horned and flashy for the sake of it), are tasteful, augmentative and rich. In the main. Of course, I’ll always say I can do with less of them, but the record is not overwhelmed by solos or ego-driven passages designed to astonish, thankfully. God knows, that would be a deal-breaker.
The songs are busy without becoming untidy. The band balances a skittish absurdity against translatable convention. The album has a continuous momentum without ever feeling monotonous or repetitious. In fact, I like the fact that the band haven’t included an instrumental atmos-piece like so many other records in the genre do. There’s not even a tedious intro composition to get through at the start of the record; it slams (almost) straight into the action.
My point is, simply, that this is song craft. It is meticulous in its attention to detail and nuanced decision-making. It is accomplished in performance, but also in its origination; the band are clearly aiming for something unique and they manage to achieve it. Everything feels intentional and is as designed. It’s fucking great actually. And nothing short of a revelation.
An escalating, electrified whine launches the first song and the LP, introducing a sense of apprehension and wonder that will continue for the next 40-odd minutes. Just as it reaches its fizzing peak, Pitiless Mechanism slams in, with an immediately attention-grabbing riff that genuinely caused my head to turn as it crashed into my eardrums.
It’s a simple rhythm on the guitars that is amplified and joyously confused, tenfold, by the busy-ness of the drums. More or less as soon as the vocals kick in – that are gruff and roared, but definitely NOT inaccessible or laughable Cookie Monster humpty-flumps – the rhythms all change to an unexpected off-kilter pattern.
A few bars later, the riffs morph up again into full-blown “WTF?” territory, dancing across your mind’s eyeball like a tiny parasitic worm, wearing microscopic tap shoes on every one of his millions of tickling toe-toes. The riffs never stand still. They drop down, jump up and fling themselves from one side of the sound-stage to the other like a Heavy Metal Legs & Co. Marvelous.
The complexity of the playing hits you in the chops but increases your engagement. I don’t find myself drifting away for a moment.
Inseverable starts off a bit more flashily, with a widdly solo. I know, I know. But hear me out: SOMETIMES a guitar solo can be additive. It doesn’t ALWAYS have to be an ostentatious space-filler. And on Inseverable, Aenigmatum hit the that sweet spot.
Much longer, and they would risk losing me, but as it is, the solo at the start is short and well-written enough to augment the song rather than “polish” it, so it works well.
The rest of the piece demonstrates an off-kilter and discordant bludgeon, with some REALLY satisfying off-beat punctuation that is only one small step away from jazz-kind. Then it slips back into coherent, four-four time more slickly than cat-shit on linoleum. The contrast snatches your rhythm bone and makes your head bang with a grimace of awe on your face. It’s ace! Honest. Some of those chords and their placement are bloody magnificent. What a choon. The awkwardly timed ending just serves to curve my grin upwards.
Architects of the Fated follows, and its Modus Operandi seems to be to make you think that the flow of the record is dropping to a skittish lull. For now. The guitars are being played slowly; sensitively picked; but the drums… Bejesus. The double bass drums are pattering away like the wings of a ladybird, accompanied by the shimmying waspy rasp of the high-hat. It feels like a battle of friend and foe amidst the nature of my back garden. Again, this lends a fresh take on what could be dismissed as a tired genre by those unfamiliar with it.
The middle of the song goes full Mastodon, if a broader comparison is required (again). Like one of the darker passages off Remission. There’s magic at work here. The band’s sheer musicality and conception of what composition can mean takes my breath away.
A Tarnished Nexus is the fourth track and, I’m guessing, will open Side B of the vinyl record once it’s out. Compared to Side A’s opening salvo, it is more subdued and atmospheric. It lumbers into step with compellingly repetitious riff work before picking up pace, with an engaged time-change that is signified by an opening and closing high-hat pulling you up to speed and retaining you in the centre of the pack.
An immediate momentary stop to silence changes the pace. The music returns more quickly and returns to an augmentation – or echo – of the earlier riff and an entrancing lead-line. Then it dynamically comes back again to a more coherent riff for a verse before leaping into an abyss of chaos once more. It’s delightfully breathless.
Nocturne of Ageless Reverie is the penultimate track of our odyssey. And that’s what it feels like, to me; this has been a rollicking great epic adventure, thus far. Aenigmatum are musical tale-tellers, and their character arcs, narrative pacing and creative worlds of wonder leave me considering if anyone else really does A Heavy Metal Story At Bedtime like they do. No one springs to mind. Just FYI.
And as I ponder that, Nocturne of Ageless Reverie exposes its withered genitalia in the most glorious way. So far, every song has been ace, so the last thing one expects is to have the song of the album reveal itself at this late stage of proceedings.
But it does. It’s the most driving track so far; perhaps the (marginally) least busy and straightforward, but I’m not entirely convinced by my own words. I would say though, if you’re going to give one track here a go as a taster, Nocturne… would be a good choice. Here’s the frantic proof:
The epic conclusion to Infinitude’s Passage is the title track and, for me, it’s the one song to criticise. Bear in mind, this is purely personal, but it would be remiss of me not to mention it, regardless. I caveat the following with the fact that I’m not arsed about gently-picked clean intros and soloing. It is almost always too flamboyant for my taste – and thus far, we’re barely a minute into the song and I’m already getting pissed off with it.
Once all that fluffy shite is out of the way, the band return to their awkward best with a curling main riff that pipes itself out like a dog with an upset stomach. And that continues to one of the best passages on the record; the central part of the composition has my near-favourite riff or two of the LP on it, so the start of the song is fully redeemed.
Until we are dealt the crushing blow of the climax. Now; it’s fair enough to say that everything I’m about to convey forms just three minutes of the album. There are another 38 or 39 minutes that should not be tarred by this brush, but I have to say, it takes a lot of self-discipline to remember that.
Let me explain. The song drops back to the clean stuff of the intro which, on an album of incessant highs, feels like an odd choice. It doesn’t provide the relief from the maelstrom as is presumably intended; it is a frustrating diversion from it. So, there’s that – but get this – because it’s so out of place that I fear it might become the post-release cornerstone of the album’s reviews – they then bring in a SAX.
Not a skronking, honking, dynamic and (almost tolerable) chaotic sprinkler of spice, but smooth and wallowing sax, like some hideous and entirely unnecessary tribute to fucking Careless Whisper. It is so vile, so horrible and so disappointing I skip to the end of the record now from halfway through the song. WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING?
Why is this so important to mention? Because sans sax, the album is a solid nine out of ten. Maybe even higher. Because of the sax, it drops to an 8.5. And then, because its inclusion makes you concerned for the underlying taste of the musicians themselves and fear that something similar, previously undetected, could reveal itself at a later date, betraying your trust in Aenigmatum as a whole, it drops further, to an 8.
On one hand, I applaud their confidence. It’s a bold move, if a tasteless one. On the other, I don’t ever recall feeling like what I need in my life is a spattering of Gerry Rafferty in my Technical Death Metal. It’s abhorrent to my ears, but again I insist, it’s a personal thing. One man’s meat… etc. You might love a wispy blow on a horn and, if so, more power to you. Let me know in the comments.
That gripe – which I hasten to add, despite the space I’ve given it – is very minor in the flow of any otherwise almost flawless record.
I can genuinely see a world where Aenigmatum reach beyond their own insular scene in the same way that Mastodon have. Sorry to use that same reference again, but it’s an easily translatable comparison. And I’m lazy.
I actively encourage you to not only take this LP and run with it, but to dig deeper into the band’s back catalogue too, because that really is a treasure trove. And a great gateway into the more technical and articulate side of Death Metal.
So; a quick din-dong of my bell and a “Hear Ye!” one more time: if you’re in the mood for a challenge that might just broaden your taste, understanding and love for music in general and metal in particular, you could do a fuck-load worse than picking up Infinitude’s Passage. It’s awesome. Highly recommended.
This is what Metal sounds like in 2026 and it’s really bloody exciting.
~
All words bySean Millard. Reads more at*Expletive Deleted.
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