Album Review: Skyharbor – Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos

For a landmass as vast as India, a country with over 1 billion people living in it, the number of times you come across one of their metal bands isn’t all that often but there is now a rapidly-growing scene. The furore surrounding New Delhi’s Skyharbor is indication that the world stage is primed and ready for the floodgates to open. Why Skyharbor have been one of their breakthrough acts isn’t clear, but their global sound and the fact they have sunk their teeth into such a vogue genre must be factors.

Nailing a worldwide release for their double-disc debut album, Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos, can’t have been the smoothest of rides (“four years of epiphanies and disappointments” according to brainchild/guitarist Keshav Dar) but it’s easy to see how they got there in the end when you see which label they are gracing (Basick) or cast your eyes down the number of international guest appearances. Also bear in mind that these contributions are from guys who offered their help, not vice-versa. Guys like ex-TesseracT vocalist Dan Tompkins, whose pin-point tone is so obviously the key to the Skyharbor door-lock and consequently ends up singing on 80% of the album, and guys like ex-Megadeth axeman Marty Friedman who contributes to two tracks.

The majority of the content is made up by the Illusion disc and, honestly, it’s a delight to finally hear a modern progressive metal record that is happy to dip its toes in the waters of djent, but doesn’t feel the need to obstruct the flow of the songs with incessant levels of palm-muted hammering or flood you with wave upon wave of ambient wash. The band has allowed for a very organic writing process. Left unencumbered by heavy-handedness or complex mathematics the natural rhythms are left to flow and create instantly recognisable patterns. The production has followed suit and swapped hard, angular tones for a softened, more emotive backline that has put the vocal upfront and undominated. “Dots” is a straight-up joy, “Catharsis” is a brilliantly-layered puzzle with an undemanding solution, and “Celestial” burns with unambiguous, anthemic ambition (listen out for Friedman’s blistered, falling riff and Amogh Symphony’s Vishal J. Singh’s quixotic solo).

Any pent up anger that comes from holding back their instincts is released within the howling confines of Chaos. The band rip into the music with vigour, winding up the pace of their attack and rolling around in distortion and syncopation like pigs in muck. Sunneith Ravankar (Bhayanak Maut) is let loose to roar almost continuously through “Trayus” and “Aphasia”, but it is the split-personalities of “Insurrection” which invigorate the most as, like a spinning compass, the befuddling rhythm finally settles on a direction, both in its more turbulent and calmer guises. Throughout Chaos you get the sense that the heart of the album is still there, latent in the background, desperately fighting to burst through the surface as and when it can. And yet I am left with mixed-feelings about this segue into crushing heaviness. There are several bands who have mastered this kind of polyrhythmic, invasive bedlam already, so whilst it provides a deathly foil for the life-giving properties of it’s sister disc, to some extent it feels a little like the band are laying out their abilities to merely impress; an over-exaggerated evil, perhaps?

Illusion is far more beguiling and there is one particular work of art that sums up everything that is brilliant about Blinding White Noise. With intertwined rough and smooth layering pouring like colors out of “Maeva”, it’s a composition that, whilst forming just one more mountain top in a rolling range of peaks, is a piece of music that seems to transcend faceless labels. You simply couldn’t get away with calling it a “track” or a “song” without doing it an injustice, so I haven’t. At its core lies a series of spine-tingling change-ups that provide the platform for Tompkins to soak us in gloriously sweet emotion. His magnificent tone and eloquent words seem such a fitting place to end this review, so I’ll hand you over to him… “It’s so damn hard to let go / But take a chance / And survive, come together, embrace life / This is India!”

Also online @ The NewReview

Album Review: TesseracT - One

This is an album that has been eight long years in the making. Right from that fateful day in 2003 when guitarist Acle Kahney began penning lyrics, for what was then a solo project, right up to the day that the fully-formed TesseracT handed over this hallowed piece of polycarbonate plastic, they have been building to this moment. It's been a long process of road-testing and fine-tuning their material through a multitude of live performances and recorded previews. Needless to say, along the way they have accrued a mighty fanbase, not forgetting a recent Golden Gods nomination, so that now there are many who will hail this album as the moment when the validity of a new music scene was finally accepted by all.

Djent - that odd-sounding word just keeps popping up. I suppose it's the kind of word you can really chew on. Although you could just as easily describe TesseracT as being math or tech metal, for some reason this more-refined description seems to fit them better. The onomatopoeic 'djent', originates of course from the sound of a heavily-distorted, palm-muted guitar strike and it is all over this album. You'll no doubt catch the influences they've picked up from their tours with Meshuggah and The Devin Townsend Project, but that's not to say that those high-gain, polyrhythmic cuffs dominate here like they do on so many of those particular bands' tracks. No, here it is used more as a lead-through to the more evocative side of TesseracT where they flood you with unerringly epic vocal (that, initially, sounds like it would be more at home fronting an alt-rock band), expansive melodics and wildly progressive key changes. These are moments that are more likely to make you feel like you're in an alien environment - similar to that ethereal music created by bands like No Made Sense, Mastodon or Isis.

The overlapping vocals that float in layers above the chiming guitars and funk-fuelled bass of 'April', the emotion-soaked verses of 'Sunrise' (the antithesis of the underscored hammering strings) and the skyscraping vocal that runs through 'Lament' before acquiescing to the shuddering pulse - these are the moments where we will wallow, allowing our minds to wander. The spatial polyrhythmic blasting of 'Deception', the hopelessly cantankerous 'Epiphany', Dan Tompkins' mesmerising vocal performance over the soaring melodics of "Eden" - these are going to be the rare moments when we focus and throw shapes.

If it is true of 'One' that we have already gorged ourselves on it's heart (The six tracks that comprise the 'Concealing Fate' saga were released last year), leaving us just five new tracks to mull over, then it is also true that hearing what surrounds the centre is like suddenly seeing the whole picture. Listen to that early release now and it will feel somewhat incomplete. So although this is essential listening, before you leap, consider this. It may be a generalisation, but the levels of production clarity on show can easily divide the potential listener into one of two factions. The tech-heads amongst you will get goosebumps, whilst the remainder will bemoan the absence of raw edge; the inorganic, procedural feel of the delivery. I'm afraid, on a personal level, this kind of pinpoint accuracy does make me a little nervous. It's the same feeling I get when I visit a hospital - metal-fronted lifts set into white walls and high heels click-clacking on spotless lino - impulsively, I want to scratch up the floors and throw mud at the machines. So while I'm on board to a point, I'm going to be a lot more likely to dig out the filthy majesty of Chimp Spanner or Of Legends to get my djent fix in the future. Consider yourself warned.

Also online @ MTUK = http://www.metalteamuk.net/apr11reviews/cdreviews-tesseract.htm