Sybreed was a Swiss metal band, characterized by their genre-busting sound that combines industrial, groove, and melodic death metal into one cohesive sound while occasionally flirting with other genres like progressive metal, symphonic metal, and non-metal genres such as Electonica and New Wave Music.
Formed in Geneva in 2003 by Tomas "Drop" Betrisey (guitars) and Benjamin Nominet (vocals). The band released their first album The Slave Design in 2004, followed by extensive touring over Europe. In 2006, drummer Alex Anxionaz left and the band hired Dirk Verbeuren (of Soilwork, Aborted, and Scarved fame) to record the drums of Antares, their sophomore album. Antrares was released in 2007 to almost universal acclaim and is widely considered to be their best album. After Antares the band recruited Kevin Choiral for drumming and continued to tour over the next few years. The band released their third work The Pulse of Awakening, in which the band experimented with their sound, which brought some mixed reactions from their fanbase following the acclaim surrounding Antares. In 2012 they followed up with their fourth album God is an Automaton.
Unfortunately in October 2013, it was announced that the band's singer and co-founder Benjamin had left citing both personal and professional reasons for the departure. The band, not wanting to continue without such an important member, was put on indefinite hold and in 2014 it was declared that the band had officially split-up. However, later that year the three remaining members of band joined together and created a new project under the name "Obsydians" with the promise to continue the Sybreed sound and style but with a different and varied cast of vocalists.
Discography:
- The Slave Design (2004)
- Antares (2007)
- A.E.O.N (2009) - EP
- The Pulse of awakening (2009)
- Challenger (2011) - EP
- God is an automaton (2012)
The band contains examples of the following tropes:
- Careful with That Axe: It's not uncommon for their vocalist to belt out crazy shrieks that wouldn't be out of place in a black metal setting.
- Cover Version: "A Love Like Blood"
- Cyberpunk: A common lyrical theme for the band.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The Slave Design had a much more "raw" and "industrial" sound than their later albums, especially in terms of the synths and production. The songwriting was also less technical and it didn't have the melodic death metal sound that is prominent on all their albums afterwards.
- Epic Rocking: "From Zero to Nothing" (19:19), unless you exclude the last 10 minutes of the song which is just ambient noise, "Destruction and Bliss" (9:44), "Ethernity" (9:21), "Lucifer Effect" (6:36), "Plasmaterial" (6:27) and "Bioactive" (6:24).
- Ethereal Choir: Used on a few of their songs.
- Genre-Busting: Their core sound is a mix of industrial, melodeath, and groove metal. As if that already wasn't hard enough to categorize, they often took elements from genres, both metal and non-metal, and experimented with them in their music. The band simply referred to themselves as "Deathwave".
- Groove Metal: Of the djenty variety.
- Industrial Metal
- Instrumentals: "Ex-Inferis"
- Melodic Death Metal: Has been an important part of their sound From Antares Onward.
- Metal Scream: Benjamin mostly uses a type 3 with types 1 and 2 being also mixed in on occasion.
- New Sound Album: Each album does this:
- Antares toned down the industrial metal sound somewhat while adding melodic death metal to the mix and featured much more technical rifts and song structures.
- The Pulse of Awakening saw the band put more emphasis on their electronic/synth sound while experiment with other genres like new wave and symphonic music, with slightly less focus on guitar rifts in the writing.
- God is an Automaton is a mix of the last two albums, having Antares-like technical guitar rifts as its core sound while retaining some of the the expanded sonic elements from The Pulse of Awakening.
- Portmanteau: Their name is a combination of the words "synthetic" and "breed".
- Progressive Metal: While highly debatable and contested, The Pulse of Awakening could be considered this due to its Genre Mashup experimentation with other genres, having a wider variety in song moods and intensity, and having relatively technical songwriting and instrumentation compared to most other metal.
- Soprano and Gravel: The band's vocalist Benjamin was a one-man example.
- Signature Style: Groovy guitar and drum rifts laced with polyrhythms and syncopation that are quite technical, but are not flashy or over-the-top and still have a strong melodic quality, combined with layers of various synths, samples, and electronic sounds.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Almost all of their song lyrics fall on the cynical side of scale, although there are few lighter exceptions.
- Special Guest: The drums on Antares were recorded by Dirk Verbeuren. Possibly part of the reason why that album was so technical.
- Travis Montgomery of Threat Signal played a guitar solo on "Destruction and Bliss".
- Uncommon Time: "Orbital" alternates between 6/8 and 11/16 time while managing to keep a strong groove. Most of their discography is in standard time but their extremely heavy use of syncopation and polyrhythms can make it sound like this being invoked often.
- Vocal Evolution: Like the band's sound, Ben's clean voice has (intentionally or not) changed with each album. On The Slave Design his voice was quite raspy sounding and had a lot more aggressive bite to it, whereas on Antares it became more clear and smooth sounding and he started using more of his higher register. The Pulse of Awakening saw his voice became much more nasally sounding along with being a bit more monotonous in terms of range, and on God is an Automaton he returned to his Antares style but with his voice having more power and dynamics behind it it. On the other hand, his harsh vocals remained mostly unchanged over time.
