The Apparatus

 Thursday, 06 December 2007 Most guitar virtuosos in metal take after a neo classical influence. While Cynic, Atheist and Dillinger's Escape Plan brought an unconventional jazz influence into the spectrum through 2 generations, no one has really explored the idea to its fullest extent. All these extreme Mathcore/Math Metal bands dabble in jazz but there is only ONE so pure and so fully emerged in jazz and that is Spiketrain.

Spiketrain is a composed, free time jazz metal band that writes in sessions of 3 seconds to every hour! You think you and your band works hard...you have absolutely no comprehension whatsoever what hard work is. Spiketrain's hard work serves an artistic purpose and not just for recognition. It seems other bands in the genre are jazz tinged math metal. What Spiketrain is, is the complete opposite; math metal tinged jazz. Nothing ever repeats; there are no chorus', no hooks and because of it first listen might feel a little uncomfortable. So many different things are being played at once all at incredible speeds. The beauty of Spiketrain is their chaotic and dissonant sounding music is actually melodic and organic on a profound level. Being its only 2 songs and around 4 minutes, that's plenty of extra time to repeat the songs and try to catch on, little by little.

The drummer Paul Olsen plays with every limb completely independent. Jazz has never been played so angry and fast before, EVER. This leads me to their vocalist. Adam has a very powerful "from the gut" style of singing. It's very "pukey" and punk sounding.

These 2 songs single handedly push the already extreme boundary of Tech Metal to a new level. This band is just so young and write so tedious it might take awhile to catch on.

 Friday, 30 November 2007 Gorerotted makes me laugh. The first time hearing this it cracked me up. Only Tools and Corpses have a great mixture of speed, heaviness, groove and catchiness to it. The mix between a ballsy death metal singer and a dirty British street-punk won me over. I really have a hard time finding a band with two singers that I don't like. I really like music that doesn't relent. Gorerotted's two vocalists make for some really insane shit. Both vocalists can sing like what is a million words a minute.

I actually did song calculations on their vocal speed. In the song 'Village People of the Damned', there consist the lyrics "Staggering, wandering, bludgeoning, murdering, tearing, and feeding on tissue and flesh My insides and instincts are hungering and thirsting for people with which I can eat and infect Smearing and smarming and coating whilst laughing my body and clothes in their blood and their bite Eating and munching on flesh is disgusting but hunger won't go so I kill to survive" between 0:59 and 1:10 into the song. That's 61 words in 11 seconds!!! Some of those words are even 3 syllables long.

Not only does the singer Mr. Gore come off as a street punk singer, the band's entire sound gives off an angstful punk attitude even though their lyrics and gore themes are very tongue and check. They are all great musicians as with their obvious virtuoso vocals, the punk/dm hybrid guitarists and use of a drummer that goes by the name of "Rushy Insane." (Need I say more?). The drums go in and out of blasts with fills and rolls that seem faster then the blast beats themselves. It's not that technical but if I've ever heard spazzed out speed drumming, it's on Only Tools and Corpses.

This album is awesome. It's fast, humorous and angry. It's not too long, it's not too short. Besides the catchy sing-a-longs, it has enough quarks to keep your full intension.

*It has been brought to our attention, by the band themselves, that the excerpt in the review is actually sung by Wilson and Ben, not Mr. Gore. "Mr. Gore couldn't do it properly."

 Thursday, 29 November 2007 Easter is one of the most challenging albums to listen to. If you can ACTUALLY comprehend the music and the vision of these artists, you find beauty within the ugly.

Cloacal Kiss sounds like a kidnapped Sawtooth that was forced to play in an infinitely tall aluminum silo, with less distortion and a robot drummer. I really got to hand it to them though they are really doing their own thing no matter how much the vocals force them to be recognized as Sawtooth 2.0. Fact of the matter is the only member of Sawtooth in Cloacal Kiss is "Rich" the vocalist. Cloacal Kiss also features the cult Nick Peyer formally of Virulence.

I don't think Richard has let up on his vocals whatsoever. Which I give the utmost respect to because it seems like, to sing like that, is to abuse your vocals to the point of stabbing yourself in the throat. The difference between Rich's vocals on StG and CK, is that CK's recording style is a lot cleaner, and the tempos at which Rich sings to actually slow down and play out this time. His vocals are the most dissonant, loud, angry, noisy, spazzed out, obnoxious vocals you will ever hear! The vocals are completely insane, it's funny at times. Especially peoples reaction to the music. Some of the played out and slow-tempo songs like Red Mask and Easter, Rich drains out his vocals for over 20 sec increments. He almost touches on some black metal techniques with the whole angry gremlin vibe. He also now sings with a brutal BRUTAL death metal growl. It really adds to the music as well as his exercising his vocal range. It's so exaggerated and extreme, that it's cultivating and intriguing.

I think the members of Cloacal Kiss actually have a sort of artistic expression. You can hear it in the atmosphere. They aren't just out to play the most abrasive and technical music in existence (i.e. Sawtooth). I really enjoy the artificial drums in this case. They don't over do it. I think they had in mind, getting an actual drummer so they programmed drums that were humanly possible to learn.

My favorite song on the whole album is the title track Easter. Easter starts chaotic as the rest of the songs but mid way through it goes into a beautiful, melodic, atmospheric groove in the vein of some of Dead Mountain Mouth by Genghis Tron. I'd like to see more of this from Cloacal Kiss. Their slight experimental touches hint for some even better stuff from them in the future.

 Thursday, 29 November 2007 Wow, by the first song I already know this is the heaviest thing I've ever heard. Closely analyzed I'd say their metal 'parts' sound like a cross between Sepultura and the obvious Meshuggah.

One could dispute Coprofago as a Meshuggah 'rip off' here which I will compromise for the sake of argument and say is true. What also is true is that Coprofago has taken Meshuggah's sludgy, off-timed, mathmatical technique and expanded on it far greater than Meshuggah in this present day. This release is far less repetitive and a lot more interesting.

There's just something about their guitar tone that sounds super compressed and has this devastating jungle flair to it. Don't fuck with Chilean slam! Perhaps this style is a subconscious tribute to their south american culture. Which they should be proud of! This is the best thing I've heard come out of Chile.

Genesis has a beautiful mix between devastatingly heavy and jazzy prog. Every part of every song flows together and stays technical almost the entire time... a delite to the detailed ear. This album is SO solid! It really takes the best from other really good bands and makes it their own. Bands like Atheist, Cynic and Meshuggah should be proudly passing the torch to Coprofago.

 Thursday, 29 November 2007 Dark Lunacy seem to be slowly using more metal cliches but still manage to stand out from the rest. I remember when fans of Dimmu's Death Cult would ask for a suggestion, I'd turn them to Dark Lunacy. Their blend of Gothic, Orchestral, Melodic Death Metal is a force to be reckoned with.

The vocals are gross. They used to fit better but with their dirty guitar tone and cheaper production but on this album, the overall sound is cleaner and tighter. To a new listener, it probably wouldn't stand out as much but to a long time fan it's more noticeable. In other words, you can't really "clean up" a raspy voice. Mike's vocals show even more of his thick, romantic, Italian accent. With the cleaner sounding guitar, the riffs have leaned more toward the Swedish Melodic Death side (thus the cliche) but my ears can sacrifice a couple generic riffs for some of the best song writing I've heard in modern metal. This music is far beyond just their guitar playing.

The theme of the album is one the most original ideas I've heard in a long time. It's a World War 2 concept from the European view. Dark Lunacy's story telling ability is very strong. Even instrumental song's like the Diarist, paint a picture of someone taken refuge from a war going on outside and they are typing a "diary" to the child they are holding in their arms because they might not survive to tell their tale in person. At least that's what I take from it. The beautiful of this album, it let's you use your imagination.

This band uses a string quartet, chorus, solo piano, a solo female singer and samples of a full orchestra to strengthen their sound. Songs like Play Dead and Motherland will have a sort of pseudo breakdown. Dark Lunacy tends to do a lot of guitar tremolo and double bass harmonies. It's very Fear Factory-esque but not in a bad way.

If you like the fusion between the classical and the metal world without all the cheese, castles and dragons, check out Dark Lunacy. They are taking the genres and blending them together beautifully.