Montreal’s Dissension uncork an all-quenching bottle blended of melodeath with thrash elements brewed together with breathtaking synthesizers and keyboards to add to the already overwhelmingly potent musical spirits. The pace that Dissension delivers on Of Time and Chronic Disease is so painfully addicting and is guaranteed to leave your neck in a near broken state, but it is worth every second of beautiful agony.

The keyboards and synths often strike an eerie similarity to Finntroll’s older play style, particularly in the song “Graceless Death”. When not retaining the preceding sound the keyboard’s echo through your mind as if to click repeat is the only option; yet still a lovely one. I love the bass in “Legacy”; it does an excellent job of creating mysterious weirding for the next beat down of instrumental entropy. Each riff is very melodic and often shaded with just the right amount of hype for the oncoming chorus or solo. The drums usually keep everything sounding incredibly fast and sound absolutely fantastic to boot, especially the maddening speed and soft relentlessness during the outro’s.

Nathan’s vocals sound closely akin to those belonging to Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity) with the riffs bringing the resemblance even closer.
One of my favourite things about this album is the instruments do a brilliant job of helping to “paint the picture” that the lyrics explain. One of my favourite lines is near the end of the song “Legacy” where Nathan cries out what I believe is “still I carry on… fading with the rays of the sun…” the outro to follow it up is truly captivating. Everything on this album blends together magnificently.

My top recommendations for this release would be the aforementioned “Graceless Death” and “Apotheosis”. The prior is loaded with the bands very heavy and modern sounding guitar riffs with beyond hypnotic keyboards and synths. The latter has one of the most memorable riffs I have heard in ages, it is so elegant yet so devastating and stays ringing through your head even hours after you listen to it; it is also a delightful conclusion to the album.
“Thralls to the Crucified” is also a very fun song and would be absolute madness to witness live.

I praise the transitions on Of Time and Chronic Disease, as well as the outro’s, for they are some of the most beautiful pieces of work I can recall. The ultimate conjuration of keyboard and guitar with the quickening slaughter produced by the drums is so far beyond wonderful; and they are still able to incorporate that highly addictive haunting vibe throughout. It’s metal like this that makes me so glad to be Canadian.

Final Rating: 8/10