Ever since Miscreance emerged, the Italian underground has been all the richer for it. Formed in 2018 out of Atomic Massacre, the band has carved out a highly personal and instantly recognizable identity by taking the foundations of old-school technical death/thrash and pushing them through their own creative filter. The influence of Atheist in particular is impossible to miss, but there is nothing nostalgic or second-hand about what Miscreance are doing. Instead, they have taken those classic ingredients and turned them into something fresh, forward-thinking, and unmistakably their own.
Their debut Convergence already made it clear that this was a band with serious ideas and the musicianship to back them up. With Reminiscence, however, Miscreance take another significant step forward, raising the bar and delivering a record that makes its impact felt from the very first note.
Trait d’Union is an anything-but-conventional opener. Clean guitars, bass, and percussion initially create a strange, suspended atmosphere before the track suddenly erupts into a whirlwind of technical death/thrash. Constant tempo shifts, intricate riffing, blast beats, razor-sharp harmonies, and lightning-fast solos come and go at a dizzying pace, yet the song never loses sight of its overall shape. The closing section, with its clean vocals and interlocking guitar lines, adds another unexpected layer to an already remarkably multifaceted opener. Vision picks up the pace and brings the band’s thrashier instincts to the forefront, driven by vicious riffs, breakneck tempos, and an exceptionally flexible rhythm section. Jean-Claude Rossignol’s bass deserves particular attention here, adding considerable weight and depth beneath the guitar work rather than simply following along. With Scalp Ceremony, the band introduces a more ritualistic and primal dimension, incorporating tribal percussion into their already intricate framework. The contrast is striking, and the track quickly establishes itself as one of the album’s most distinctive cuts. Synaptic Cortex Dissection takes things even further into progressive territory, standing among the record’s most technically demanding and ambitious compositions. Fractured riff patterns, dissonant passages, shifting tempos, and sudden atmospheric turns keep the song in constant motion without ever making it feel directionless. That approach carries over into Oracle’s Rift, where aggressive sections, irregular time signatures, intricate guitar work, and unconventional vocal moments collide with more spacious and atmospheric passages. It is the kind of track that reveals new details with every subsequent listen. The Moaning Hill is shorter and works almost as a transitional piece, its nervous, creeping character gradually giving way to breakdowns, tribal percussion, and didgeridoo. The result is an eerie, unsettling interlude that provides the perfect lead-in to Symbiosis. And if one track could be singled out as a distillation of what Reminiscence is all about, it would be this one. Symbiosis brings together technical death metal, thrash, progressive structures, and tribal elements in a complex but remarkably coherent composition, proving that Miscreance are not simply piling influences on top of one another — they are making them work together. Zenith of a Dying Sun shifts the mood toward something darker and more apocalyptic. It begins relatively restrained before gradually building into a storm of elaborate riffs, scorching solos, and relentless drumming, giving the track a sense of impending collapse. Finally, Mirage brings the journey to a close in an almost dreamlike fashion. Predominantly instrumental, it gives the guitars and arrangements plenty of room to breathe, moving back and forth between some of the album’s most extreme passages and quieter, more spacious sections. Its acoustic ending and distant vocals slowly dissolve the record into silence, providing a fitting conclusion to the journey.
There is ultimately little left to say other than this: Reminiscence feels like the record that has truly put a face to Miscreance. Not because they lacked an identity on Convergence — quite the opposite — but because a debut is, by definition, a band’s first statement, the point where its ideas begin to take shape. Miscreance had already shown on that record just how much they were capable of, but Reminiscence takes those foundations and builds something considerably broader and more defined upon them. The band has expanded the boundaries of the style they have chosen to play without losing sight of what made their sound compelling in the first place. Technical, aggressive, adventurous, and unmistakably personal, Reminiscence is more than a progression from its predecessor: it is a statement of intent. Without a doubt, one of the standout releases of the year.
