Listening to this record is puts me in mind of the classic science fiction scenario in which a character is confronted by an old friend- same appearance, same mannerisms, same expressions- but slowly develops the suspicion that something intangible is… different, somehow. The title of Gigan’s second album, Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes promises a lot: in no uncertain terms it suggests that those oddball pseudo-psychedelic sections that gave Order of the False Eye its trippy character have been ramped up to chin-stroking proportions. That’s a pleasing prospect, but it doesn’t quite transpire. Instead, this is a rather more prosaic tech-death album than its predecessor, which ultimately feels uncomfortably like a band treading water despite their obvious experimental side.

It won’t do to exaggerate the differences between the two records because, as the first sentence of this review indicates, there isn’t much. In some respects the band’s approach on is largely indistinguishable, albeit this time around with a more polished production. Obscure and obliquely-angled riffing pounds at the listener remorselessly and mercilessly; a meaty technical death metal onslaught twisted painfully into the most awkward and abrasive shapes. It feels like a cross between the otherworldly audial horrors of Gorguts and the frantic technicality of Sleep Terror. The big difference is the absence of what before seemed like a fairly peripheral element; the stretched-out hallucinatory interludes that coalesced into tracks like the debut’s wonderfully freakish centrepiece, Hiding Behind the House of Mirrors. Sure, the strange funky allusions of Transmogrification… or the cavernous introductory section of closer The Fathomless Echoes… hint at it, but their heart doesn’t really seem to be in these moments.

Whilst in theory this shouldn’t matter too much- it’s hardly the core of Gigan’s sound- the effect is to remove the aura of unpredictability that gave Order of the False Eye such character. Whereas there it felt like the band could spiral off into madness at any given moment, here everything feels tightly and aggressively controlled: less enigmatic and more aggravated. Tracks like the opener Mountains Perched Like Beasts…, Raven and the Crow or Vespelmadeen Terror are like gruelling death metal assault courses, sometimes- as with the industrial hammer riffing of the first mentioned or the flailing chromatic runs of the second- tunes are blindingly violent and humourlessly intense, as if the intangible alteration suggested above is simply attributable to the band having developed an unhealthy interest in weightlifting and protein shakes. So then the question becomes, why is Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes any more interesting than any other tech-death act? To be honest, I’m not sure that it is.

It would be tough to call this a disappointment because it works pretty well as a competent restatement of the brutal technicality evident on Order of the False Eye. Still, to me, it doesn’t really feel like much of a step forward in an artistic sense.