International collaborators, Angel Eduardo and Redouane Aouameur, have a clear division of labour. The former handles the lyrics and clean vocals, and the latter pens the words for his harsh screams. With two albums and one EP behind them, they enter 2025 on the back of a standalone single in February. Fragile Immortals is the second extended play in their repertoire.
If not for the Adhan (the Islamic call to prayer) in the background, you might wonder if you’ve stepped into Call of Duty for the first one minute and seventeen seconds of ‘The Inquisition’. That’s before programmed drums smash through the fog, and Redouane Aouameur roars into his microphone in whisper mode. His use of digital software to manipulate his voice hides its weaknesses. Without technology, the volume levels would be little more than a quiet simulation of aggression.
By contrast, drop-tuned guitars and thumping drums confront you in ‘The Revelation’ until a radical move into multi-harmony vocal lines changes the direction like a bear walking away from a wrestle with a human being. You’ll need at least fifty seconds to dismiss the idea that Angel Eduardo’s rock vocals belong in a Jean Claude Van Damme commercial for Coors Lite. Here, power chords syncopate like Helmet riffs punctuated by Humanity’s Last Breath. Might we call this industrial nu metal under the smothering hand of “thall”? Fortunately, ‘The Tyrants’ is where you realise that Angel Eduardo is a genuine singer with melody and power. Placing his voice over this squirming djent-infested noisescape is like making the British Royal Family live in Birmingham. Neither vocalist claim to play the musical instruments, but both are clear which of them composed the lyrics and performed the clean and harsh parts. This might explain why anyone with an eight-string guitar and three lessons under their belt can write these riffs while yawning through a soundcheck.
To their credit, it’s only at track four, ‘The Harbinger’, when the inevitable Meshuggah abuse occurs, and it’s not unlistenable, either. But eight minutes of a dystopian song that forgets how to govern with subtle consent will always be a challenge. Redouane Aouameur’s deep guttural voice is much stronger than his whispered fry screams. Add in Angel Eduardo’s attempts to provide the rock heroics and you have a strange concoction of industrial beats and metal riffs that cancel each other out. It feels like one last belch of a dying machine at 05:15 before they shut down the hardware and reboot it.
Fragile Immortals is disjointed, tense, and ambitious in its determination to fuse together two contrasting vocal styles. But it feels more like a digital collaboration for a private hard drive rather than an organic piece of music.
JVB
Verdict
Release Date: 04/07/2025
Record Label: Self-released
Standout tracks: The Revelation; The Tyrants
Suggested Further Listening: Human Traces – Akt I: Life to Die For EP (2022), Grayscale Season – Do You Like Violence (2022), The Hate Project – Blessed with Malevolence EP (2023)