Augury

Montreal, Quebec’s Augury came together in 2002 and swiftly aligned themselves with French Canada’s established legacy of intricate, progressive-leaning death metal. Their first release, the 2004 album Concealed, drew strong praise from the specialist press for its robust and varied songwriting while introducing a female co-vocalist in a novel way. That singer, Arianne Fleury, along with drummer Etienne Gallo, was let go before work began on the band’s long-delayed second album, Fragmentary Evidence—their debut for Nuclear Blast—prompting questions about the resulting sound. Patric Loisel on vocals and guitar, Mathieu Marcotte on guitar, Dominic Lapointe on fretless bass, and incoming percussionist Antoine Baril responded by producing another boldly inventive strain of death-metal aggression that dispelled those doubts.