Frownland

What a monster of a record. Modern classical, doom, electronics, explosive percussion...this is truly avant-garde metal, a term that too often is applied to Mr. Bungle or Zorn worship (or mimicry). The album kicks off with "The Crow Speaks." A hypnotic, rhythmically minimalist but melodically rich double bass solo introduces the track as it gets increasingly interrupted by electronics before descending into wild death tribalistic doom. Then it evolves into a quasi-improvisational call and response between the guitar and bass that's almost cinematic, all the while pocketed by what sounds like electronically processed percussion in addition to the drums. This track goes to so many places without giving an idea too much or too little time to evolve and the transitions between wildly different parts are far from awkward. It's chaotic yet methodical.

"A Wandering Fire" opens with cellos and interesting percussion with lonely drones and shrieks before falling into this weird heavy repetitive chamber music jazz fusion thing with some more prominent piano that's just ****ing wild.

"Godhead" dwells in a more ominous dirge approach with plodding piano and bowed bass with slowly pulsing drums and spoken word. A lead guitar comes into the picture with playing somewhat reminiscent of the solo from the end of This Heat's Fall of Saigon before the group explodes into a mindmelt of noisy, drony soundscape. The drumming on this track is just phenomenal.

Closing track "The Marrow" starts off in a more directly chamber music fashion, with some indescribably beautiful drones and ambience with minimalist, almost third-stream piano. The strings grow more weepy before the track closes with the final words "I would be near; I shut my eyes to see;
I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestow; Upon that god who knows what I would know." A gorgeous track and a highlight of the record, but the whole thing is strong from start to finish.

Listening to this record again for my review has me thinking that this should have been ranked higher. This might be a more appropriate candidate for the "Trout Mask Replica of metal" than Obscura by Gorguts. By that I don't just mean how much I love it, but how innovative it is in its deconstruction and how rewarding it is upon repeated listens. This is really a masterpiece.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.