If you’re not yet familiar with Lividus, it’s best to start getting acquainted. Following up on their two short but incredibly sweet EPs, the Portland, Oregon powerhouse are finally releasing their debut full-length Scarabaeus. An exemplary exercise in genre-spanning riffage uplifted by a tremendous vocal performance, this is one of those albums that makes you step back and appreciate everything heavy metal is capable of.

As someone who loves to use genre tags when describing music (as subjective as they inherently are), Lividus leave me a little stumped as to which categories they should be lumped into. Melodic black/death metal, progressive metal, thrash metal, it’s all there. We’ll just call Scarabaeus “extreme metal.” Bassist Connie Wang and guitarist Rob Shaffer (of Uada fame) trade in frenetic, nimble riffs that turn on a dime; flurries of trem-picking give way to thrashy grooves, climbing arpeggios, and brief odd-meter digressions, soon bounding back through all these techniques (and more) once again (Christy Cather of Ails and Ludicra is also in the band, though not featured on this recording). An extremely varied group of acts ranging from Voivod to Hammers of Misfortune to Emperor are cited as inspirational, and you need only dip your toes into the album to see why. Scarabaeus hits the ground running with “Jettatori,” and aside from the bookending ambient tracks and the midpoint calm of “They Blew the Flies from Their Lips Before They Spoke,” refuses to let up for a majority of its 34-minute runtime. You may come to this album for the potent riffing, but you’ll stay for the single performance that outshines all others: that of vocalist Uta Plotkin.

Between soaring, epic cleans that sound more befitting of the most sword and sorcery doom band you can evision and vicious blackened rasps, Uta Plotkin brings the sound of Lividus to 11. The intimately connected interplay between the riffs and her vocals has to be the strongest weapon in Lividus’ arsenal; the manner in which she follows notes that ascend the entire fretboard on tracks such as “”Amphisbaena” is a real joy to hear. All other clean vocalists take note! This is a lesson in how to take command within a sound that’s already chaotic. Plotkin also provides some welcome change to the sound through sorrowful viola, but unfortunately the instrument doesn’t appear until “The Empty Circle,” and is used only sparingly throughout the rest of the album.

As powerful and varied as her performance is, I do find there to be one downside… none of the vocal lines on Scarabaeus are as memorable as anything found on the preceding EPs Tetany and Teratorns. The colossal heights that were reached on tracks like “Recreant” or “Her Nacreous Eye” are just never quite reached here. In this vein the full-length is a bit lacking in the production department in comparison to these releases as well. Tetany has that slight lo-fi charm of a band just starting out and Teratorns was mastered by Colin Marston, so I don’t really need to explain more. On Scarabaeus I find the mixing of the drums (and the sound of the kick drum in particular) incredibly distracting at times. Cutting through in a way akin to a slam or deathcore track when during isolated moments on “The Empty Circle” or in the opening of “Jettatori,” it doesn’t ruin the entire album but certainly puts a damper on things (especially when Teratorns sounded so perfect in both sound and composition).

While it doesn’t quite touch the releases that preceded it, Lividus still manage to firmly plant their flag as a “must-listen” band in the vast world of extreme metal with Scarabaeus. Riffs devastating yet complex, exquisitely paired with one of the best vocalists I’ve come across in recent years. Combining just about everything you love about black, death, thrash and prog metal, Lividus are one of those bands that makes you sit back, reflect, and simply state “I fucking love metal music.”

— Colin

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Scarabaeus will be available April 17 through Nameless Grave Records. For more information on Lividus, check out their Facebook and Instagram pages.