SPECIES: Changelings, The Second LP From Polish Technical Thrash Metal Trio, Is Now Streaming In Full
SPECIES - Photo by Tomasz Kępka
SPECIES: Changelings, The Second LP From Polish Technical Thrash Metal Trio, Is Now Streaming In Full; Album To Be Released This Friday On 20 Buck Spin
Stream SPECIES’ Changelings HERE.
Changelings, the scorching second album from Warsaw, Poland-based technical thrash metal trio SPECIES, is now playing in its entirety ahead of its release this Friday through 20 Buck Spin, marking the label’s first release from a Polish band.
SPECIES’ debut album, To Find Deliverance, leveled us with its rare blend of technical thrash prowess and unorthodox but highly inspired songwriting, enough to make 20 Buck Spin’s Best Of 2022 album list. Out of that list a collaboration was born, and now SPECIES is poised to make their label debut with their incoming second album, Changelings.
A step up in every regard, SPECIES’ Changelings is astonishing in its accomplished precision and how much it manages to achieve within the scope of individual tracks and as a cohesive whole. The album features an overload of angular guitar warfare, traditional Euro-thrash aggression with a modern resonance, rhythmic percussive seizures, and intricate basslines that make their intention deeply felt, not just following the guitar but dialoguing with it in a way that offers a second melodic brain to the album. In combination these elements thread seamlessly to give Changelings its colorful and uncanny vision, as if John Carpenter had co-produced Rust In Peace behind the iron curtain. It’s bristling with sci-fi paranoia, alien terror, and a hint of Cold War menace. The early convergence of thrash metal with death metal is also unmistakably present in the shape-shifting sound of SPECIES.
While there’s more than enough primitive and traditional thrash bands to go around, SPECIES embraces the genre’s lesser-travelled road of forward-thinking virtuosity and inventive experimentation, showing there’s still plenty of fertile ground to seed new musical territory. Nowhere is it more apparent than on 10-minute album closer “Biological Masterpiece,” where the band displays all its weapons; hyperspeed assaults, dystopian lulls, and instrumental mastery, in a climatic saga beyond space and time.
Produced by SPECIES and Filip Pągowski, the drums for Changelings were recorded at Nebula Studio by Tomasz Stołowski, while the guitars, bass, and vocals were recorded at No Stress Studio by Filip Pągowski who also mixed the album. The album was mastered at Subterranean Watchtower Studios by Damian Herring, completed with cover art and logo by Aleksandra Pawłowska and photography by Tomasz Kępka, and the song “Voyager” features synthesizers by Krzysztof Buffi.
Changelings is that rare album nowadays that still can surprise in the most triumphant and euphoric way possible: technical progressive thrash of the highest order. Adherents to the works of Coroner, Voivod, Kreator, Hypnosia, Anacrusis, Watchtower, Death, King Crimson, Rush, Master, Hexx, Horrendous, and the like, welcome SPECIES to your repertoire.
Listen to SPECIES’ Changelings in its layered entirety now on the 20 Buck Spin YouTube channel RIGHT HERE.
Changelings will arrive on LP, CD, MC, and digitally this Friday, September 19th. Find preorders at the 20 Buck Spin web arsenal HERE and Bandcamp HERE, and watch the video for “The Essence” HERE.
Following their recent duo of shows supporting Dark Angel in Wroclaw and Warsaw, SPECIES has booked a hometown release show for Changelings for October 11th, with more tour dates currently being plotted.
SPECIES Live:
10/11/2025 New Vegas Club Ursynów – Warsaw, PL *album release show w/ Gallower, Pandemic [info]
“SPECIES provide the perfect counterpoint to most other neo-fangled tech-metal rockateers. Their songcraft obstinately fidgets like Watchtower or late-‘90s Destruction while also being melodic and buoyant. Their compositions percolate with plot twists and head-turning spectacles. They’re technically impressive while also sounding gloriously human, heavy, and fun as hell. 9/10” – Decibel Magazine
“…the band’s ultimate advantage relates to the manner in which the three players play off one another so pleasantly, imaginatively and seamlessly. You hear everyone pretty much at all times here as they wander, jump and fly around together, and Changelings continues to uphold that ‘live in the studio’ feel that heightens the organic sense of connection between each player.” – Last Rites
“Musically you just can't fault SPECIES on Changelings. They have their brand of progressive/technical thrash/death metal down like a pro. I regularly think of what I hear as a combination of Control Denied and the debut album of Cynic. What also does help is that the sound is such that it retains a rough edge throughout the whole of the record. 9/10” – Metal Temple
“…an album that worms in mind with each listen, a technicolor sluice through imaginative but never avant-garde estrangement with a clear search in mind. In this sense following their seeker through its train of thought was consistently transporting, a pleasure to leave on repeat and weave through its maze-like sojourn. A very high recommendation.” – Mystification Zine
Review copies of Changelings are currently being dispatched. For all coverage of SPECIES including interviews, contact dave@earsplitcompound.com. In Europe contact jan@sureshotworx.de.
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SPECIES - Changelings
SPECIES - Photo by Tomasz Kępka
Earsplit PR | David Brenner | www.earsplitcompound.com
