Attention metalverse!! We got ourselves yet another case of nomen est omen in Extreme Metal. Archspire are back with a new red-hot item called Too Fast To Die, the successor to Bleed The Future1 from ’21. And boasting a moniker reeking of staleness that sounds so James Bond, you wanna throw up into a bucket.
But, this new piece may very well prove prophetic in more ways than one. So, fasten your seatbelt, speed will be of the essence this time and those traffic fines be damned.
One thing is clear, Inferi just grew themselves some competition. And to add some heft to that, the latter sent Spencer Moore over as this outfit’s now-permanent drummer. As mentioned beforehand, it has been 5 years since Archspire destroyed some of our turntables and a bunch of studio monitors over here. It was a wild ride, a record that became somewhat of a cvltish measuring stick to torture other tech death records with. And that’s a good position to be in. Only, this raises the question if Too Fast to Die really will take that gaggle of metal maniacs to the next level. Or will they all be taken to task? After all, some think that velocity is everything to take over this icy metal planet here.
First off, the record will latch on where the baton was dropped in 2021. The trademark staccato-esque, yet somewhat gruff Death Metal growls and rasps, the recklessly fast riffing, an abundance of shreds whenever the fancy takes them, and a ton of ambient moments to please the softer souls around here. Yet, all of that rushing about that tech death highway suddenly hits roadblocks. Meaning, some perfectly executed breakdowns into gurgly Brutal Death Metal will stop you straight from 350 mph to near zero. Melodies, harmonies, arpeggios, and polyphonic elements at times, Too Fast To Die truly runs down that metallic road like a hungry dinosaur ready to devour a few juicy herbivores. In other words, you get a lot of that concisely constructed mayhem that Bleeding the Future was already full of.
And yet. Archspire indeed smashed the speed button again, a bit like the new incarnation of Stortregn does its best to impress this crew. But then, they cranked up the feelz, the moody melodies Vrom Hell2 that sound something like a mad version of Dani Filth3 would play on a church organ. Only no organ is played out here, it’s only keys and shreds this time. And sometimes, they come across like some Canadian, toned-down and over-caffeinated version of Fleshgod Apocalypse (Too Fast to Die, the title track). Then you got The Vessel overdosing on melodics in a whirlwind of shreds. That one comes garnished with an excellent video (see below). Manufactured by a band that doesn’t take itself too seriously, methinks. And that’s a good thing.
But, and there’s always this terrible ‘but’ in an otherwise pretty sturdy new production. The old geezers of the review desk really missed that sense of innovation. Archspire pretty much produced a ton of much of the same. All of this with a valiant effort to do better, to take that whole gaggle of elements to the next level. But, somehow, we rested unconvinced. That is not to say that Too Fast To Die ain’t some stellar example of Technical Death Metal with all the kudos such a record deserves. But the pretty repetitive offering of a style we already heard somewhere before leaves this reviewer wanting more.
Now, the avid tech death fan will certainly get his or her fill, but as to this crew, we’ll wait until Archspire unleash their next offering. And this will tell us if they’ll take this to the next level or if stagnation will be their game going forward.
Record Rating: 7/10 | Label: Self-Released | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 10 April 2026