Dysrhythmia - Psychic Maps

label: Relapse Records, 2009

contact: dysrhythmiaband.com, www.myspace.com/dysrhythmiaband

genre: tech instrumetal/rock/experimental

rating: 10

Marast maps the discography of Dysrhythmia since the Pretest album, and the new release won’t be an exception as it is definitely worth a listen. And Dysrhythmia proves again that it’s not a band that would like to stand, sit, shuffle feet in a certain place for a long time. If there was a large gap and shifting in musical direction between Pretest and Barriers and Passages, the same holds true for Barriers and the new release. Whereas the last time the dominant new element was the infiltration by Marston handwriting, this time the reign is in firm, strict metal hand and spike collar round the neck. While listening to Psychic Maps you really won’t get surprised anymore that Luc Lemay picked Colin Marston and Kevin Hufnagel to continue with Gorguts, immediately recognizable are the influences of Marston’s black metal experimentation with Krallice and death meatl caressing in Indricothere.To the ususal weaponry of Dysrhythmia, psychedelic spaceish black metal drone is added, the main indicator being Krallice. Flirting with less usual harmonies comes quite often, comparisons could be drawn at time even to the above mentioned Gorguts. And, obviously, the influence of Behold.. The Arctopus has grown even stronger. Instead of the original sneaky rock/stoner basis the tendecies from Barriers and Passages grow even stronger, faster and more things at the same time to be precise. Without any question the main source of inspiration is metal, the speed pedal gets more and more pressure, pushing straight forward, you are just expecting to hear the triggered blastbeats and pigs squealing any moment, even though it never comes.This doesn’t mean however, that Dysrhythmia has become a more easily digestible, simpler musical body. Even though the metal is the main inspiration here, the mining is done in quite a different fashion, so even though Psychic Maps have pretty sharp edges, you won’t get the traditional metal trampling sense, nor any explosions of aggression. Still, the atmolsphere from the previous works remains, light ethereal felling, heavy psychedelia, misty, blurred sound, rhythmical dislocation, general failure to be grasped, described easily. At the same, the enthusiastic creativity almost reaches its limits here, there is almost never only one line to follow, in the backgroud, in the centre on the sides, form teh above, from the below there alwas come other lines to follow, under the misty black metal droning rhythmical battles between drums and bass take place, behind the stoner rock swinging trickle disharmonic guitar flows, there are lots happening, tehy are happening fast and they are happening at the same time. During the first contacts with the album you won’t be able to appreciate the delicate work with motives, their returns, repetition, dissolving, during the first experiences there exists only here and now and even here and now is sometimes too much, not to metion Psychic Maps as a whole. I myself, after considerable amounts of time spent listening, can’t cope and have to devote full attention to be able to enjoy the listen.In one paragraph: Dysrhythmia is running faster than ever, fatser and with more lines happening at the same time, sometimes even the head spins round and stomach gets unsettled from these speeds, sea sickness, reckless spinning around of a circus carrousel. The music got even more heavy than last time, more metal, got even more infiltrated by side projects especially form Marston’s side. Still, the disc doesn’t loose compactness, focus, thoughtfullness, sophistication, even though its again a bit harder to listen to than the last time, i can’t but give the full amount.

Dysrhythmia: Colin Marston - Bass, Kevin Hufnagel - Guitar, Jeff Eber - Drums

6/37:17

Maps: 1. Festival of Popular Delusions 2. Triangular Stare 3. Reactionary 4. Room of Vertigo 5. Iron Cathedral 6. Lifted by Skin

kot

The pAper chAse - Someday This Could All Be Yours

label: Kill Rock Stars, 2009
contact: www.myspace.com/ thepaperchasemusicspace
genre: indie/noise/experimental
rating: 9

Saving the lengthy talks about how disastrous today´s emo scene is, The pAper chAse on their new disc shows how should proper emo look like. Don´t look for any dyed hair, fringes, stupid fashionable clothes here, nor for the traditional oh so sad clean vocals and wannabe depressive lyrics. Instead you will find four quite ordinary guys who don´t really care about what´s the musical trends around, playing for something around ten years music reeking of emotions, disharmony, full of venomous lyrics that make the sweat come down your forehead. Without any pretentiousness, just the way their hands grew.
Someday This Could All Be Yours continues in this tradition, but still manages to get pretty different from the previous releases. Compared to the last one Now You are One of us, it´s much more melodic, even epic, less noisy, chaotic, less guitars, more strings. One would say that this could lead to the loss of the dark, crawling, eccentric atmosphere. However, even while being more theatrical and epic, The pAper chAse still manage to keep you gasping for air in panic attacks, only now they do it in a more subtle, atmospherical way. In a certain sense, their characteristic balancing on the verge of melody and creepy disharmony is even more forceful than before. Now the melodic parts are much sweeter and thus the contrast introduced by the uprising disharmonies brings about even larger waves of schizophrenia that has always been so characteristic for these guys. The music itself has become much more sarcastic, just listen to This is a Rape, at it´s core quite a merry, joyful song, that nevertheless is completely turned around by subtle creepy backgrounds and lyrics into a living nightmare. Lyrics. Vocals. Someday This Could All Be Yours depends on them much more than any previous album (which probably brings about certain disappearance of guitar parts, when you see the way Congelton gets into singing on this album), and Congelton really brings about quite a performance, chanting, crying, asking for help, despairing, slowly growing in intensity just to tear the place apart with almost epileptical fits, something you definitively wouldn´t guess from his nice boy blue eyes photos. The lyrics not only fit music perfectly, they even support all the musical twists, often it´s precisely them that create the “some things gonna get fucked up” atmosphere and make you shudder in combination with a sweet melody developing under them, the topic of the day here is natural disasters, full of biting sarcasm, theatrical obscenity and paranoia that makes you look over your shoulder.
The pAper chAse has turned onto a more melodic, epic song writing, leaving the guitar noise and chaos behind. Thus they managed to bring their balancing between melody and disharmony even further than before, making the new disc even more hurtful, with the inevitable venomous paranoia handed out in bunches.

THE PAPER CHASE:
Josh Congelton – guitar, vox, programming
Sean Kirkpatrick – synth, piano
Bobby Weaver – bass
Jason Garner - drums

10 / 46:35

this is all yours:
1. If Nobody Moves Nobody Will Get Hurt
2. I Am Going to Heaven With or Without You
3. The Common Cold
4. The Laying of Hands the Speaking of Tongues
5. Your Money or Your Life
6. What Should We Do With Your Body
7. This is a Rape
8. The Small of Your Back the Nape of Your Neck
9. This is Only a Test
10. We Have Ways to Make You Talk

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Ephel Duath - Through My Dog´s Eyes

label: Earache, 2009
contact: www.ephelduath.net
genre: experimental rock/post-metal/jazz
rating: 9

Anyone who watches a bit more closely what is happening around must have noticed that in the short career of Ephel Duath we have met with lots of twists and turns: ties, simple black and white stylization, moustaches, old men behind drums, pretending to be painters, pretending to be suffering to get the necessary knowledge, but to look at the world through dog´s eyes? Well, and why not?

If I omit the beginning of their discograpghy (Opera and Phormulla) and remixes of Pain necessary to know, Through my dog´s eyes is already the third variation of the crazy Italian on how to become a jazz player from a true black metalhead. And to tell it straight away, metalhead (rocker) he will stay till the end of his life, if we don´t look at how exactly do Ephel Duath profile themselves during their last three albums. But to deny the fact that he has become a jazzman I can´t as well. David is without any doubts a musical genius but also probably a bit of a freak. But to the point….

E still remains connected to metal roots by the strength and energy of the present material, although rhythmically and structurally broken, twisted, re-twisted and then shook around hardly. This might be probably also due to the topic of the album, the doggies on a leash with their owner behind themselves don´t see everything as clearly as a harum-scarum, wildly running stray dog, from this comes the jazzy freedom with which the material is presented to the audience, it´s general expressionism. To the avant-garde side of the specter it is pushed by the work with constructions of the songs and the sound. The fact is that the metal thing as you know it won´t happen here, even though the album is pretty heavy and full of riffs (in the new era of the band the heaviest) and for some maybe even too straightforward; I welcome tracks as Nina or Guardian. However, I don´t see it this way and I call it complexity. Definitely I don´t see the new album as something breaking the qualitatively increasing trend in their discography, it won´t get los for sure, it is a bit more modest with experimentation (it won´t surprise so much), but its holding together better, it has a more common atmosphere, I can feel the interconnectedness of the whole material, when David the fashion designer used one main thread to sew the main corpus and only after used different threads to add the final touches. TMDE is definitely not any turning point in the ED discography, but it has its own firm place inside it and it fits well, as it is still above any genre classification, it is still freaky enough, don´t know if exactly avant-garde, but still it cannot be precisely say what we are talking about here, as metal, rock or jazz it is not. And so I threw the new disc somewhere into the category of earthy, electrifying experimental rock balancing on the verge of various alternative genres, even country at times.

The record sounds pretty often like a jam of southern musicians on heroin (similar to Virus) in some hidden Nashville bar full of cigarette smoke (eyes burn), snooker games (the effort to look normal) and drunk locals (lack of coordination) drooling while looking at the half naked ladies (it is still exciting), but gradually as you get more interested into the music you realize that actually no one is jamming here, the structures are well thought out and arranged. The energy to give you the necessary thrills is not the most important thing here but anyways the music goes around quickly and you are not bored, the important thing here is the feeling and flair for expressing tones, thoughts. The grunge designed guitars meet unconventional guitar picks, rolling slides (that’s where the country feeling comes in), strictly set jazz improvisation ended by naughty sampled aftertastes. David has been holding his specific hand writing since the Painter´s, without any doubt you will recognize it immediately in the beginning what band is playing. The album has a clear analog sound, especially the drums done by Marco Minneman (Necrophagist, Freaky Fukin Weirdoz, Paul Gilbert, H-Blockx, Garry Willis, The Kelly Family, Illogicist ). I would really like to know who will play on the next record, Vinni Colaiuta? I should also mention the absence of Fabio Fecchi and his bass, the album doesn´t sound empty however as vocals and guitars take even more arrangements. Vocals. I really have to say that this time they really do an essential piece of work. Luciano Lorusso George really came close to his limits this time and throws around swarms of vocal styles, switches between shouting, roaring, narration, speech, sometimes even coming close to rap, vocal positions non-positions, in short really takes a lot on his back on this album. The lyrics must be interesting as well – for example just the beginning of Gift: “I have a present for you, It’s a cat! Do you like it? As the cat decomposes, do you like it?”

TMDE is a coherent, something above half an hour long segment of selected freely floating thoughts following one another and mixed together into various interrelated structures. In other words, if you forget for a while all the complicated arrangements, guitar pickings slow downs, certain unwillingness to follow rules, the new disc of Ephel Duath actually brings grunge goes bankrupt attitude and you will never be sure whether you yourself aren´t high still or whether it was all just a dream. And indeed that it was just a dream, just a few doggie thoughts about weather in which you wouldn´t kick a doggie out in the cold passed through your mind.

EPHEL DUATH: Davide Tiso – guitar, Luciano Lorusso George – vox (already ex, now Guillermo Gonzalez – vox), Marco Minnemann – drums (live - Andrea Rabuini or Sergio Ponti - Illogicist)

9 / 32:18

through my doggie´s eyes: Gift, Promenade, Breed, Silent Door, Bella Morte, Nina, Guardian, Spider Shaped Leaves, Bark Loud

bizzaro

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