Syk - I-Optikon album review

Technical Italians with a very undjentlemanly approach

Cover art for Syk - I-OPTIKON

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

Phil Anselmo’s Housecore label propagates everything from black metal to drone, so it makes sense that Syk call it home.

For their second album, the Italian four-piece have toned down the spasmodic glitchiness of debut Atoma without sacrificing any intensity. The Dillinger-isms may still pierce through Mud’s time signature-bending riffs, but mostly this is akin to Meshuggah ripping on Black Sabbath’s bong with a shot of noise rock to wash it down. Vocally, Dalila Kayros is Björk reciting Beelzebub’s diary; every whispered word and slipping of pitch during album centrepiece Disintegrate pulls influence from the Icelandic legend’s larynx, mercilessly warped on Kayros’s whim. Sinomi’s distorted, monotonous riffs and the cry of ‘Consume my flesh!’ on Fleshworms are unlikely to make your jogging playlist despite Fong and Absense’s initial thrashing. With I-Optikon, Syk have refined their racket and applied Meshuggah’s guitar tone to amount to something other than ‘Ooh, look how clever we are.’ And it is terrifying.

Alec Chillingworth
Writer

Alec is a longtime contributor with first-class BA Honours in English with Creative Writing, and has worked for Metal Hammer since 2014. Over the years, he's written for Noisey, Stereoboard, uDiscoverMusic, and the good ship Hammer, interviewing major bands like Slipknot, Rammstein, and Tenacious D (plus some black metal bands your cool uncle might know). He's read Ulysses thrice, and it got worse each time.