Over their last three albums, post-proggers Intronaut have played
things fast and loose. They are known for lurking between the dark
polyrhythmic assault and vaulting angst of Periphery and the lighter,
jazzier tendencies of Between The Buried And Me, but with this latest
full-length they have tightened up the ship and worked hard to a create a
flow to their music.
It’s not unusual to find them stumbling over the gritty hardcore
edges that frequent the music of Monuments as they do for opener “Fast
Worms”. Its raging chorus sees vocalist Sacha Dunable dishing out roars
from behind a dark, powerful series of shreds. With the album constantly
returning to themes such as the lunacy that lurks within the modern
world, the capitulation of reason and the fragility of the human psyche,
they pick some rather tasty, suitably insane lyrics to match.
“The pieces fit together
Like so many arms and legs,
Lifeless, limbless, body rejects”.
“Digital Gerrymandering” follows up on this by laying out its
theatrics early with barking, downtuned strings – DJUN-DJUN DJUN. It’s
pure Periphery but the artistic flourishes soon melt into complex,
flowering structures of dots and splats. Riding around a strong central
core, the glowing pop-fusion tech of Intervals and the furious
stringwork of Animals As Leaders begins to break through. This abrupt
switch from driven fervour to jazz interlude is strange but not, in the
least, unwelcome.
The album’s weaker material hurts more when you consider the strong
stuff. “City Hymnal” is a particular irksome beast and offers little in
the way of direction – when you consider the album title, perhaps that’s
the point. In the same vein, munching its way into existence with a
literal NOM NOM NOM, “The Pleasant Surprise” is a one-dimensional scrawl
of strings which digs away at you with the repetitious lyric “Gaps in
the wall”.
Compare those two with the crushing title-track and “Sui Ponticello”.
The former comes embedded with the rough-housing djentisms and snarling
roars of Meshuggah all tipped into a maelstrom of double-kick and
scrawling guitars. It all eventually spills into a hushed bridge; the
aural equivalent of being torn apart by rip tides before being spat out
onto the tranquil safety of a warm, sun-soaked beach. The latter track,
the album highlight, bears a malevolent potency; a tapestry of rising
and falling arpeggios, overwrought with taped threats.
With Devin Townsend mixing the squeaky tight production, this was
never going to be an issue here. What irks are the peculiar structural
anomalies and sense that they really are heading back over familiar
territory. Blow me if they aren’t deconstructing here more than they are
bringing something fresh to the table.
I must admit it is a surprise to find them boxing themselves into
corners and not stamping their own mark on proceedings. It hasn’t
stopped them sporting a kaleidoscope of polyrhythms and tones – proof
that these LA boys are still brimming with promise. As for that flowing
music they were hoping to create, they aren’t quite there just yet.
There’s enough about The Direction Of Last Things though to prove one thing – surely it is just a matter of time before they crack the code and create a masterpiece.
Crippled Black Phoenix have always been a hard one to pin down to a
single genre so its no surprise to find multi-instrumentalist Justin
Greaves still warping any pre- or mis-conceptions we may have of his
band. This long-playing EP comes hot on the heels of last year’s White Light Generator – an album that marked their 10th anniversary.
Having tackled the emotional journey from stoner doom to freak folk
they continue their homage to the likes of Pink Floyd by covering their
classic composition “Echoes” from the 1971 album Meddle. Here
they strongly echo the source material yet manage to expand it from its
original 23-minute running time, employing some neat little tricks and
charming affectations, to a whopping 37-minuter in two parts. Definitely
a melange that Floyd fans will want to check out.
The two original tracks here provide most insight into their
evolution. With trumpets and gunshots opening the album the scene is set
by “Spider Island”… something wicked this way comes. Slow, clean, dark
instrumentation with a long, languid, deeply affected vocal brings the
constituent parts to climax somewhere between the damaged grunge of
Soundgarden and the dizzying wash of Monster Magnet.
Nestling up to this
the title-track and album focal point is a psychedelic journey down a
more occult side-road. Big on cyclical effects, pinged bass and warming
Hammond organ, the structural twists stand out like bullet-points. The
central rhythmic break is a doozy, lingering within an echoic chamber of
Jarre-ish Oxygene effects. From here, the instrumental
patterning continues to morph until It becomes apparent that the track
has already reached its peak and lost its sense of direction long before
it meanders to a close.
A record that is not without fault then, but one that sits pretty on its perch.
Moksha is total instrumental immersion from the first warm blushes of
the mesmerising opener “Prithvi” to the closing twinkle of “Agni”.
There’s a cotton-wool effect going on that dampens each and every note,
cosseting you in down, absorbing you into its arms. Long, languid,
gentle-warping notes intensify the mix of psychedelic trance, stoner and
post-rock by bringing to bear a rich variety of Rajastani string,
percussion and wind instrumentation. Engaging at every turn, the tracks
consistently bear fruit, stretching the experience with a mind-boggling
degree of layers. In a word, faultless.
2: Between The Buried And Me – Coma Eliptic(Metal Blade)
Since the birth of his solo career, Thomas Giles Rogers, has
strengthened his vocal performance no end and BTBAM are reaping the
rewards. With Coma Eliptic they continue to yank the wildest of genres
together, everything from polka and bossa nova to death metal. However,
what is different this time around is the simplified vision and
consequently the interconnectness of each part. The music gently segues
together with a single tone in mind. What that does is create continuity
within each individual track and across all tracks. The joy of “The
Coma Machine” is both explosively progressive and consistently
engrossing but its relationship with “Famine Wolf” and to an extent the
powerful “Option Oblivion” is undeniable. Even the beguiling dark
two-minuter “Dim Ignition” breaks boundaries. In my mind, this is none
other than BTBAM at their peak.
3: Periphery – Juggernaut(Century Media)
On release, Juggernaut hit me like, well, a juggernaut. Right smack
between the eyes. Rabbit in the headlights. It is a concept double-album
which could incite you to violence. It will make you both wince and
weep. Even after playing, it will lodge itself permanently in your
psyche. The story, told in heart-rendering first-person, will break even
the hardest of you. Containing the groove, psychedelia, hardcore and
jazz all ripped through with rhythmic conflict and dark lyricism, it
truly is an essential piece of psychological musical warfare. You have
been warned.
4: Heights – Phantasia On The High Processions Of Sun, Moon & Countless Stars Above(Basick)
Ignore their somewhat erratic output – this is no ordinary side-project.
Sharing a drummer with cult post-rockers Tesseract doesn’t count for
shit. Yes, getting my hands on this was a case of luck rather than
judgement, but that doesn’t alter the impact it has had upon me. It’s an
instrumental work of sheer beauty that will see you speeding through
the cosmos like a meteorite, pausing merely to marvel over the joy,
colour and sparkle that Heights inject into their compositions without
ever resorting to repetition; without ever sinking into use of force to
get their concept across. Phantasia… is an utter delight from Big Bang
to Big Freeze.
5: Enslaved – In Times (Nuclear Blast)
With their usual unrestricted vision, Enslaved have created a wonderful,
drive-dominant, hook-laden album filled with chugging gallops, dark
roars and menacing anguish. It is a work that will suck you in then cast
you adrift. Replete with invention throughout, the highlight arrives at
the album close. “Daylight” is the band at the peak of their powers
throwing out choral builds that warm the heart. And it comes all washed
through with strong echoes of Devin Townsend’s epic structuring, tones
and textures – well, I’m sold.
6: Man The Machetes – Av Nag(Indie Recordings)
Whipping along at a dizzying pace, this sophomore effort from punk n’
rollers Man The Machetes draws its power from revelling in visceral
heft. Standout moments come with the stepdown in pace to the crawling
lead and sweet rock-a-bye riff on “Tung Luft” and with the crafty,
constructive forethought that has gone into the humdinger “Orkenmarsj”.
Their time is now; come join in the dance.
7: Acid King – Middle Of Nowhere, Center Of Everywhere(Svart)
Lapping up the echoing majesty of such bands as Monster Magnet and
Orange Goblin while sourcing the wild electric fuzz of St. Vitus, Acid
King offer up an absolute peach of an album. Live, the tracks are
mind-blowingly intense, yet here wrapped up in the smooth dynamics of
the studio the music actually becomes even greater than the sound system
upon which it plays. Then, just when you thought they couldn’t get more
monstrous or distortion-hungry, vocalist Lori goes and twists her
tonsils around “Laser Highlights” and take this beast to an even higher
plane.
8: Caligula’s Horse – Bloom(Inside Out)
Jim Grey’s vocal is utterly beguiling and here, progressive technicians
Caligula’s Horse, have created the perfect vehicle to show it off to its
full potential. From elegaic, melodic numbers to big grooves with
addictive choruses to malevolent pieces filled with hate-fuelled
lyricism. Bloom is riddled with passion – it lets in a little light and a
little darkness and is well worth your attention.
9: Wildlights – Wildlights(Season Of Mist)
Riddled with the uplifting braggadocio and enslaving hooks of Audrey
Horne’s moxy and Torche’s power-driven post-rock, this startlingly adept
debut is emphatically boisterous, consistently driving and engagingly
addictive. It is effortlessly light, airy and voraciously catchy. It
glows with an inner fluoresence, blazing a trail for others – I urge you
to follow.
10: Secrets Of The Sky – Pathway(Metal Blade)
Oozing mournful, subtle introspection, yet bursting with
gloriously-consuming black-edged terror and shrewd metal crunch comes
something akin to the storytelling of Agalloch, Anathema or Alcest
whilst drunk on Sabbathian doom and Opethian melancholy. This
Californian quintet strictly adhere to their concept and unveil an opus
that feels like a worn pathway to something truly sinister.
11: Intervals – The Shape Of Colour (S/R)
12: The Atomic Bitchwax – Gravitron (Tee Pee)
13: Kontinuum – Kyrr (Candlelight)
14: Steak Number Eight – Kosmokoma (Indie)
15: Arcturus – Arcturian (Prophecy)
16: Bauda – Sporelights (Prophecy)
17: Death Alley – Black Magick Boogieland (Tee Pee)
18: Vattnet Viskar – Settler (Century Media)
19: Ecstatic Vision – Sonic Praise (Relapse)
20: Intronaut – The Direction Of Last Things (Century Media)
