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.
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)
Let’s face it, Tracer
isn’t the most inspirational moniker you could give your band. Sure, it
might put one in mind of modern warfare and its associated pyrotechnics
but it also conjures up images of thick pencils and translucent paper.
Happily though, this Australian trio have chosen something much more
promising for their album title. Spaces In Between could be an
indication of their intention to come up with something fresh; a sound
that lies somewhere between two different musical styles. Now that would
be an ambitious project, but it appears to be one that has inspired a
couple of blues brothers, who go by the name of Brown, to give it a
bash.
What they have been achieving, since their formation way back in
2004, isn’t anything quite as groundbreaking but it’s certainly solid
and initially engaging. With the band setting their sights first on
touring their home country, then the UK and Europe, as is often the case
with bands born outside the borders of America, the U.S. is the last to
get a scoopful of their patching of grunge to rock n’ roll. And when I
suggest one being stuck to the other I mean in a haphazard DIY way.
Honestly, you could split this album in half and sell it to two
different fanbases.
In the top half, “Too Much”, “The Bitch” and “Walk Alone” pull together the pounding desert rock of Queens Of The Stone Age and weld it to the raw licks of Led Zeppelin.
“Louder Than This” forms a stand-out jigging howl of a track with lead
vocalist Michael Brown giving it the full beans, whilst “Voice In The
Rain” is the kind of soft-rocker you could pass off as Whitesnake or Thunder. Occasionally the band break out a kind of Lynyrd Skynyrd-esque
frazzled country fizz which adds an edge to certain tracks, like
“Push”, but generally they stick to the tried-and-trusted blues rock
structures that they know and love.
More excitingly, everything from the title-track onwards begins to
really settle down around a grungier sound. The warm fuzz of the bass
begins to take a much more central role and the upbeat patterns turn to
downbeat tones. “Dead Inside” is a Soundgarden-esque
trudger that leaps right down the throat of Chris Cornell himself.
“Save My Breath” and “All In My Head” walk the same line but pick up the
pace. Then the power and dark heart of Audioslave come into play as Tracer throw more leads in. “I Won’t Let It Die (Run Mary)” tugs in more blues and consequently picks up a Pearl Jam meets Foo Fighters vibe.
One track, “Devil Ride” is, in my mind, an homage to that great cinematic Aussie export, Crocodile Dundee
– “Boots are made from crocodile hide / Shaved my face with a hunting
knife / Left my lover far behind / ‘Cos I walk the long road” – so that
should be an easy entry point for all you film buffs.
Honestly though, you shouldn’t need an entry point because if you are
a fan of any of the aforementioned bands then you’ll be well aware that
Tracer
aren’t breaking boundaries; achieving the impossible. Of course there’s
an almighty lump of radio-friendly rock going on in here too and,
unsurprisingly, it springs to mind that Spaces In Between is an album that wouldn’t have looked out of place 20 years ago. So yes, Tracer
are unlikely to win any awards for originality anytime soon, but then
it is instantly accessible, deeply grooved and comes with some pretty
catchy tunes… and they did pre-warn you with that band-name of theirs – you can’t go complaining now.
Here I am staring at the album cover of Between The Buried And Me's latest album, 'The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues', struggling to come to terms with an image of what looks like a discombobulated, dissected drosophila. It's grotesque and yet, at the same time, strangely beautiful. In a way, it perfectly portrays the multi-layered tones and hues found within - both disturbingly monstrous and jaw-droppingly gorgeous in turns. Like metamorphosing pupae, wrapped in their glistening cocoons, you'll hear each of the tracks build from small beginnings to emerge in sequential bursts of colour. It seems a difficult task to expect them to top 2009's stunning 'The Great Misdirect', but early signs show that they may just have produced a fine companion for it.
First thing that needs pointing out is that this is dense, hugely progressive metal so don't expect an easy ride. Listening closely to the way each layer infects the layer beneath, it gives the listener the strange impression that they're riding a lift up through levels of deep-lying strata to reach the surface where each one of the three tracks reveals itself. 'Specular Reflection' comes at you with fists-flailing before it pauses to deliver the most sublime of chiming stringed arpeggios. It'll get jazzy on you, then funky. The shifting patterns will take you stumbling across a padding rhythm and overlapping melodiously-hooked vocal that manage to lift the whole track to another level. 'Augment Of Rebirth', sounding like some almighty battle between The Faceless and Protest The Hero, wheedles then hammers, chips then gouges, rips up a deathly vocal and scatters it over staccato stickwork that will end up muddling the senses to a point when you'll find yourself locked out of your own thoughts. The descent into madness is complete when they break out the cleans to go with the circus oompah. Mental, beyond belief. Finally, the contrasting warmth of 'Lunar Wilderness' gives way to raging violence in the end but still offers more in the way of accessibility than its brothers with plenty of sick, then harmonious vocals and groovy, walking bass. Hell, there's even a large wodge of chunky headbanging in there somewhere.
'...Hypersleep Dialogues' is sprawling, yet organic and, at times, BTBAM surprisingly generate the kind of ambience that only bands like Dream Theater and Nine Inch Nails can produce. In a word, it's just epic. Yet, despite all this, it's not as memorable as I'd hoped it would be. Like an expensive meal, featuring a multitude of interesting taste sensations, not every one of those flavours sticks in the memory. The album is something of a sonic bombardment and, as such, it takes multiple plays before the entire construction can fully be appreciated. On top of this - three songs, thirty minutes? When did bands start becoming so stingy with their albums' running times? There's been no end of, mainly American, releases of this length that have started popping up recently. Does half-an-hour mean it's an EP or an LP? I've certainly seen longer EPs than this. It does seem to be an odd trait that leaves one feeling somewhat swindled in the long run. Here, of course, this represents part one of a two-part concept and that already makes it feel like half an album. When you combine this thought with the fact there is no option of the quick hit, it's easy to say the band have failed to surpass their best work. If, however, you believe in quality over quantity, then you may find plenty to like about this and already be salivating over their next release.
