Band:	Owdwyr
Album:	Receptor
Style:	Avantgarde metal, Technical death metal, Grindcore
Release date:	October 2023

01. Praefatio
02. The Liminal Carapace
03. Ripped From The Bog
04. Stench Of Indemnity
05. Lagos
06. Ein
07. Writhe
08. Supplicant
09. Reverie
10. Cower
11. A Vessel Emerges
12. Not Afraid
13. Pitchtongue Vesper
14. Catalyst Sequence
15. The Sputtering Torch

In its purest form, I find grindcore to be one of the more challenging genres to appreciate. However, beyond the surface level abundance of 15-minute blastathon albums, a handful of records pop up each year that are doing something a bit more ambitious, and Owdwyr’s debut album Receptor is a prime example of this.

Still, it would be selling Receptor short to describe it as merely a grindcore album. Perhaps deathgrind would be more accurate, insomuch as it has grindcore and death metal elements featuring heavily on it, but while there’s parts of this album that bring to mind bands such as mid-era Cattle Decapitation, Owdwyr push the limits of both the grind and the death, the latter of which veers towards the more technical end of the spectrum. What’s more, the Californian trio throw in classical music influences and a whole lot of extra curveballs across what is a dizzyingly unpredictable and inspired debut outing.

While the three full members of Owdwyr (guitarist Paul Plumeri Jr., bassist Chris Williams and vocalist Max Lichtman) aren’t overly established in the metal scene (albeit with backgrounds in bands such as Isyou and Immolith), they’ve recruited some serious talent for this album; in particular, drum duties are shared between Alex Cohen (Contrarian), Kévin Paradis (Benighted), Navene Koperweis (Entheos) and Kenny Grohowski (Imperial Triumphant), while there’s also guest features from Hath’s Frank Albanese (vocals), Kilter’s Ed Rosenberg III (saxophone) and Sydney Kjerstad (piano). Further musicians that do not perform on Receptor but whose compositions have been adapted by Plumeri for segments on the record include Arvo Pärt, Allan Holdsworth, Heitor Villa Lobos and Radiohead; there’s a lot of talent residing in the DNA of Receptor, and that comes through when listening to the album.

With 15 tracks on this 44-minute album, the song lengths are mostly on the shorter side; 10 of 15 songs are less than 3 minutes in length. Unsuprisingly, some of these shorter tracks offer the most blistering assaults on Receptor, with the 52-second “Writhe” perhaps the most unambiguously grindcore moment on the record, but even on this song some of Owdwyr’s personality comes through, as trippy electronics add a weirdness to the closing seconds. “Cower” is another brief burst of violence, but in place of the low-end churn heard on “Writhe”, the blasting is combined with chaotic, dizzying, dissonant guitar leads; “Cower” serves up unhinged belligerence, and caps itself off with a completely left-field saxophone solo.

The various drummers recruited to perform on this album were all tasked with serving up seemingly endless blasting attacks; even the songs that are closer to tech-death and prog-death use them liberally. One such song is “The Liminal Carapace”, which starts in explosive fashion with frenetic tremolo riffs, but which also incorporates some slower, chunkier riffs and melodic solos later on, as well as simple-yet-effective synths. I mentioned Cattle Decapitation earlier, and while there’s none of Travis Ryan’s insane vocal range here, there’s quite a few riffs on the likes of “Ripped From The Bog” and “Lagos” that feel like they could have come from their deathgrind records from 10-15 years ago; the grim, slow beatdown parts of the latter song in particular are very tasty.

As already stated, there are plenty of unusual elements here amongst the chaos. On top of the aforementioned saxophone solo and the intriguing use of synths, another moment that stands out is in “Supplicant”, an otherwise punishing song that finds a way to tastefully incorporate a snippet of melodic guitar work that could have conceivably appeared on an album from one of the many modern prog guitar virtuosos. There’s also songs that outright move away from the pure extremity that dominates the album, none more so than “Reverie”, which opens with ambient synths and has an odd, clean-yet-unsettling and increasingly intensifying writing approach reminiscent of “Inner Paths (To Outer Space)” from Blood Incantation’s Hidden History Of The Human Race.

The variety isn’t always successful; the one track that throws me on every playthrough is “Not Afraid”, which out of nowhere opens with a fairly bland thrash metal sound. The song as a whole offers up some moments of merit when it dials up the aggression and weirdness, but it’s peculiar to see Owdwyr slip in something so straightforward and generic amidst everything else. However, it is but a one-off, as the three following tracks that close out Receptor bring plenty more in the way of ambition; “Pitchtongue Vesper” has a lot of intriguing lead guitarwork in line with some moments from Between The Buried And Me’s more extreme periods, while the closing song “The Sputtering Torch” sees Owdwyr commit to their classical influences by incorporating orchestral arrangements alongside the grind, death and (near the very end) djent.

The eclecticism of Receptor may be offputting to fans of its constituent extreme metal styles, but to me that eclecticism is Owdwyr’s biggest strength. Receptor is a wild ride with very few missteps, and one that sits easy alongside Gridlink’s Coronet Juniper amongst the best that the grind-sphere has to offer in 2023.