Bandcamp SHEEV named their album after Ate, the Greek goddess of ruin and delusion, and hired the right people to make it sound suitably grand: David Bottrill (Tool, King Crimson) on the mix, Karl Daniel Lidén (Katatonia, Truckfighters) on the master. Ate’s Alchemist is Berlin prog-stoner-metal with real budget behind it, eight tracks that open on a crackling spoken-word invocation and then range widely, from tube-warm heavy rock to thrashier gallops to proggy, dynamic set-pieces, all sung in a rough, clear, front-and-center voice.
The room to move
The best thing here is that Bottrill and Lidén let it breathe. For a record this heavy, Ate’s Alchemist is refreshingly un-brickwalled: the drums land with real, un-triggered punch, the guitars carry an earthy tube saturation, and the songs build in genuine dynamic arcs rather than one flat charge. “Elephant Trunk” is the clearest case, a dense riff workout that opens into a spacious clean-guitar middle before it closes the trap, and “Cul De Suc” and “Sabress” work the same quiet-to-heavy dramaturgy with a warmth modern metal usually engineers out. When SHEEV lean into the prog side and let a passage stretch, the pedigree shows.
Not every track holds that standard. “Martef” is mastered noticeably louder and harder than its neighbours, trading the album’s dynamics for a compressed punch, and “Tüdelüt” leans on a tighter, slightly sterile multiband-compressed sound. Across the record the low mids occasionally stack up around 250 to 400 Hz where the rhythm guitars and bass crowd, and the sheer stylistic range, heavy metal one minute, thrash the next, hard rock after that, means Ate’s Alchemist shows off more than it settles.
But those are quibbles against a well-played, well-produced, ambitious record that mostly refuses the loudness trap. There is craft in every corner of it, the concept is delivered with a wink rather than a sermon, and the dynamic writing rewards a full, attentive listen. Fans of the proggier, un-crushed end of the Ripple Music roster will find a lot of meat on this bone.
Standout tracks: Elephant Trunk, Cul De Suc, Sabress
