EXIVIOUS

Jazz-Metal isn't for everyone, but what Exivious has done here is just amazing. Their debut album was OK, but the 2nd one really pays dividends. I've listened to this one more than 40 times, and still find new stuff. It's poetic yet agressive, melodic yet riff-based, challanging yet basic.

I find all four musicians captivating, and almost all the compositions are spot-on. The musical production and mix are almost perfect, with just the right amount of running time to make the album a great listen from start to finish. It creates clever atmospheres while maintaining a muscular environment.

One of the best Dutch-prog albums in recent albums, "Liminal" delivers the goods with flying colors. Too bad that band does not exist any longer.

The music on "Liminal" continues down a similar instrumental progressive/fusion metal path to the path the band also tread on the debut album. To my ears the songwriting has improved and the music as a result sound more well thought out and mature. The album as a whole also features a great flow. The tracks are generally very dynamic in nature, featuring both flashy fusion metal sections with blistering jazz scale guitar solos, but also more atmospheric and mellow parts. The greatest asset is how well Exivious work as a unit though. All instruments are qually important in the soundscape and there is an attention to detail that´s intriguing. These guys really understand that flashy playing usually becomes old fast when it´s not paired with well written compositions. And the compositions on "Liminal" are exquisite. Very tasteful yet powerful, melodic and challenging. The addition of saxophone on "Deeply Woven" is just another well tasting spice for the stew, but it´s actually hard to single out highlights as all material on the album are equally strong. I guess the atmospheric "Alphaform" deserves a special mention, but otherwise this is an album that deserves to be listened to as a whole.

To go along with the well written music, the listener is also treated to an incredibly well sounding production, which really brings out the little intriguing details in the music. The sound production may be clear and powerful, but it´s also organic sounding, which is yet another asset to my ears.

"Liminal" is through and through a brilliant release. The musicianship are on a high level (these guys sound at ease with playing the technically challenging sections. Everything just sound very natural and never forced), The sound production is very strong and the songwriting intriguing and powerful. There is nothing in this world that can hold me back from giving "Liminal" a deserved 4.5 star (90%) rating. An absolutely brilliant release this one.

In many ways, however, these early jazz metal bands simply took jazz syncopation and the odd 7th, 9th, or 11th chord to add to their compositions which were still very plainly metal, and in many cases death metal. Over time, however, the jazz become more defined, refined, and distinguished in the music. Modern bands such as Panzerballett, Planet X, The Gordian Knot, and Exivious took the jazz sound and slowly filtered in metal elements to a simply gorgeous result. The band Exivious, however, had a unique spin, as they took the fast paced, energetic scale-running sound of Cynic and fused with a clean, refined jazz fusion sound a-la Pat Metheny or even Weather Report. Their self-titled 2009 debut hit the scene with massive force, sending ripples throughout the progressive metal community who immediately begged for more.

It took the band three years to respond, this time with a request for their fans. The band's follow up album would be crowdfunded, putting the new Exivious album in the hands of their fans, hoping that the fans had enough faith in the band to push funding for recording. In a matter of days their goal was reached, and the band's second album, Liminal, was set to be recorded.

Tymon Kruidenier, the lead guitarist, had a single goal for this album: to make the most organic, pure-sounding Exivious album he possibly could. Every sound, instrument, and atmosphere on the album was to be organically produced from a real instrument without a single synth or computer involved, and the entire recording process was to be done live with real amps, mics, and set ups. No PODs, Pro Tools fiddling, or triggered drumming at all were to be seen on the album. In the end, 2013 saw the release of the band's follow up, and all of what Tymon promised was true - Liminal was the band's best offering yet, and is perhaps the most organic sounding metal album I have ever heard.

Of course, calling Exivious a metal band is a bit of a misnomer. The band is really a fusion band with metal elements, and Liminal shows this time and time again. Gorgeously crafted riffs revolve around delicately arranged jazz chords, any chugging that occurs is really only an accent to some form of jazzy arrangement, arpeggio, or solo, and if a drum line ever started to sound "heavy," it was only to develop a crescendo which would eventually break into some gorgeous arrangement of guitar melody. Songs like "Deeply Woven," "Movement," and "One's Glow" show the band's impressive grasp on this dynamic.

If you do need a snapshot of the power of Exivious' compositional ability, look no further than "Deeply Woven." If you'll allow me the excess, for this entire paragraph I will rant about how much I adore this song. This song was one of the singles the band released with the album, along with their more atmospheric "Movement," and I was absolutely hooked when I heard this song. Without sounding awkward, forced, or unnatural, the band effortlessly weaves from delicate arpeggio work to punching riffs to soaring solos and back. While the guitars do absolutely beautiful work here, one of the best treats about this song is the use of saxophone. Exivious can sometimes come off as cold due to their very strong use of meticulously placed guitar lines, but the flawless saxophone part in this song adds a dimension that is rarely heard in this breed of music. The compositional grace, instrumental alacrity, and emotional power evoked by the passionately played wind are impressive. The band, when faced with this new element of their sound, immediately transform into a powerful rhythm section for a jazz combo and fill the saxophone part with a dense chord structure and syncopative rhythm. I admit, even as a stalwart advocate for full- album listening, that I left this song on repeat for a long, long time.

The rest of the album, however, shows no lack of compositional ability, instrumental power, or emotional content. While the boys of Exivious are not in this business to produce tear- jerkers or ballads, a number of times the unadulterated passion in which they treat their music can produce some powerful emotions. And even still, songs such as "Deeply Woven" and the delicate atmospheric piece "Movement" can add an almost sensitive side to this music. At times, the compositions might seem mechanical due to the scale-running, fast chord changes, and machine-like drumming accuracy of Yuma van Eekelen, but there are numerous points on the album when the band stops, takes a breath, and enjoys the feeling of playing music, not just the theory of how to structure chords. Creating atmospheres naturally, weaving soundscapes with melody, and evoking a sense of pride for their music number just a few of the skills these musicians have.

I admit, as a backer of the album from the beginning over a year ago, perhaps I had a vested interest in enjoying this album. But I can guarantee, if you enjoy jazz fusion, a good musicianship, and a little bit of metal, you will fall in love with this album. The production quality of the album is supreme ? the listener feels as though they are right there with the band. Backers received an HD FLAC version of the recordings (an impressive one gigabyte for a single album), and on a high fidelity sound system this only enhanced this experience. The atmosphere the band weaves with their instrumentation brings on an adventure with sound ? their music can bring you places if you let it absorb you. You can tell these musicians absolutely love what they do and they put their entire heart and soul into their music and just by listening, you can feel the passion. This album is easily my favorite of 2013, and I hope it becomes yours. 5 stars.

Their new album, "Liminal", is an instrumental affair that is always interesting and spell- binding. Indeed, I think that is the most impressive aspect here: The music grabs holds and doesn't let go. Exivious builds a wonderful wall of sound using finger-splitting guitar work, offbeat drumming with amazing fills, and incredible bass work. One of the things you will notice right away is the fact that Exivious is VERY comfortable with VERY odd time signatures. The first track, "Entrust", is an easy example of this, as the song never quite feels "right" the first time through, but then your mind will grasp the beat in all of its intangible glory in subsequent listens. In the end, the composition is genius and absolutely mind-boggling to perform.

The album never really stops, though. "One's Glow" and "Alphaform" continue the incredible composition, though I feel that they are slightly more accessible. Track after track full of instrumental fireworks passes by, and the listener is blown away time and again by the fullness of the sound and the ease with which the band establishes an odd groove. This band has a penchant for creating groovy atmospheres that blow right over your head, but then come back and smack you in the spine with their genius.

All of that, however, is also the problem with this album. The band never STOPS. There is a total lack of soul and emotion to the music, and so it comes out feeling machine-like and frigid. There isn't any meaning to the music, and there isn't much (if any) melody, either. If that's okay with you, then listen, by all means. However, I end up feeling nothing from this album, except for maybe befuddlement. It's a great album through and through, but I look to get more from an album then just technical wonder. It all comes down to what you want, and this album doesn't fit the bill for me personally.

Sub-genre: Tech/Extreme Metal (could very easily fall into JR/F)
For Fans of: Canvas Solaris, Allan Holdsworth, Return to Forever, Gordian Knot
Vocal Style: None
Guitar Style: Varied electric. Metal distortion but little in the way of "chugging". Use of swells for texture and plenty of clean tone.
Keyboard Style: None that I am aware of.
Percussion Style: Rock kit, occasional metal double-bass sound, never overbearing.
Bass Style: Very tasty, warm fretless electric bass.
Other Instruments: None
You are not likely to enjoy this album if: you insist on vocals or are a genre purist of any sort.

Summary: The roots of Exivious are well documented. It is those roots that draw people to want to hear their self-titled debut album. But there is more ? or perhaps less depending on context - to the band than what is implied by their roots. First and foremost is the fact that this is a 100% homegrown, do-it-yourself, self funded project. As we are well into the age that this is not only possible, but becoming the norm, we tend to find a lot of boiler plate production value that seems to limit the creative process. This is not the case with Exivious. While it is not hard to pick out derivative elements in this album, the presentation is wholly their own and finds a healthy niche in a genre that is now flooded with hybridization.
The most simplistic description of style/genre would be fusion metal. I refrain from using the J word for fear of a purist attack, but jazz elements resound throughout the compositional structures, chord modulations and use of broad dynamics and textures. An instant injection of warmth of tone is provided by the use of fretless bass. The guitars, while unmistakably distorted at most times, are never content to ride power chords. Instead frequent tonal variations, key modulations and string ensemble-like volume swells provide a strong sense of contrast throughout the album. The use of these tools leaves the project not wonting of vocals. Exivious allows the music to tell the story completely. They use a seemingly simple device in a two-part intermission type song, "All That Surrounds", which ties the albums segments together and provides the cohesiveness of story. The first part gives a calming false resolution major chord sound that is unraveled by the more urgent "Waves of Thought" and "The Path", finally leaving the listener on an ethereal precipice with the minor and whole-tonal "All That surrounds, pt.2". The album again resolves with the upbeat "An Elusive Need". The album rounds out at forty four and a half minutes, a short album by today's standards, but containing not a moment of filler that permeates 21st century recordings. The sense of completeness as the album fades is to often missing in the majority of music in the last 20 years.

Final Score: I spent a good 18 months listening to this album trying to figure out if it was really the masterpiece I thought it was from the first listen. In fact, I am drawn more to this album as time passes. It has the perfect balance leaving the listener simultaneously sated, yet wanting more. I am confident that the majority of prog fans, given an undistracted listen, would demand this as a part of their collection. No element completely dominates or submits. Tasteful and artistic. 5 stars.

Exivious from Holland is considered one of the top jazz fusion metal bands in last years. Formed almost 15 yers ago they mange to release only one stidio album so far in 2009, never counting the demos. Well what we have here is a combination of jazz fusion at played higher speed with prog metal leanings, usualy on this type of music is vice versa. The album is dominated by furious but yet very organized and tight guitar parts, drums aswell, is understandable because all musicians involved here are well known and handle the instruments very well. Two members from Cynic, the guitarist and bass player, the drumer from Textures and is clear in what direction the music is, very similar with Cynic, Gordian Knot, even with dutch Anomaly or Spiral Architect. Quite technical to extrmes, where the pieces flows very well one to other from more up tempo to mellower parts. Personaly I like this type of music, in this case is no diffrent but I can't consider this one a masterpiece, for instance I like more Gordian Knot, Anomaly (Holland) or Spiral Architect. The problem is here I think is that the passahes and arrangements don't contain some melodic lines, all album is based on technical manuvres, very technical btw. and is slightly not very diverse in compositions. All That Surrounds: Part 1and part 2 are more spacey and mellow but the rest is on 100 miles/h specially the guitar and drums. Not band but nothing really special aither for me at least. Anyway a good album that desearves 3 star, 3.5 stars for the first two pieces Ripple of a Tear and Time And Its Changes who are the best , the rest are ok with a minus on Asurim the worst tune of this record. Fans of thegenre can take some spins, worth it but is quite far from masterpiece status as many pretend to be.

Exivious are probably best known for featuring former Cynic members Tymon Kruidenier and Robin Zielhorst, but the band go back as far as 1997 and have released three demos before the release of this debut album. They started out as, what I would characterize, a Cynic clone, but soon dropped the growling vocals and became a fully instrumental unit.

While the music features metal elements like double bass drums and some relatively hard edged power chord riffing, the music style is at it´s core jazz/fusion based. To my ears this is jazz/fusion first and progressive metal second. The musicianship is outstanding on the album and even though this is a self-released album, the band have managed to produce an album with a good professional sound quality. The tracks are complex, featuring multible sections and changes in dynamics, a fusion based rythm section and some really well played guitar solos and themes.

"Exivious" is actually quite the impressive release by the Dutch, and if you enjoy jazz/fusion with a metal edge, this is definitely a recommendable purchase. A 4 star (80%) rating is warranted.

As the genre of metal has virtually reached its creative peak, attempts have been made to crossover this relatively extreme sound in music with many other genres, most notably being classical music, and jazz. As one could guess, many of these attempts to transform the sound of heavy metal into something else fall through and only come out half-baked, perhaps showing potential, but often fail to do anything that has not already been done before. Exivious' full-length debut comes at a stage where jazz-metal fusion has already been up and running for almost twenty years, and some could argue that it was perfected shortly afterwards. Regardless, there are few acts I have heard that incorporate the two styles as fairly together as does Exivious, and along with a better performance than I could have hoped for in an album like this, 'Exivious' is one of the best instrumental metal albums I have ever heard.

When describing the sound and music of this band, it is very useful to point out that the guitarist and lead man of this project Tymon Kruidenier is a member of the legendary progressive death metal act Cynic, helping to make one of my favourite albums 'Traced In Air' as incredible as it was. For anyone who has heard that album, the same style of melodic, yet highly technical riffs translates well onto an even jazzier template. The music here is completely instrumental, and for the style that Exivious are playing, that is a good thing; having vocals to work into this music would have been a confusing and distracting move. Instead of the progressive death metal that Cynic played, think of something quite a bit more mellow, yet retaining every bit of technicality. As opposed to a metal album with hints of jazz as I was expecting, Exivious finds themselves dead in-between the two genres. The music is constantly shifting gears and dynamics, light on recurring ideas but heavy on complexity and dynamic flow. Think of Pat Metheny at his most complex, amp up the heaviness, and you begin to get an idea of what Exivious is about.

One thing that could be complained about here is the apparent lack of melody in the music, and while there is certainly nothing here that a listener will find themselves humming along to, there is more than enough here that keeps a listener engaged and interested in what the band is doing. Although there is a definite focus on keeping things technically impressive, Exivious plays their material with a surprising amount of feeling, thanks in no small part to the sort of freedom that the jazz style gives its musicians. On top of the main course, there are respites from the technical jazz metal, sometimes taking the form of mellow sections within songs, but most notably being the pair of interlude tracks called 'All That Surrounds', which each form a masterful ambiance using laid-back tapping easily reminiscent of Animals As Leaders. These comprise the most accessible slice of what Exivious is about, and the rest of the album takes quite a bit more time to really become involved with. At first, 'Exivious' is an album that while a technical marvel, seems to meander around and scarcely leave the starting grid. My first impression with the music was certainly wrong though, and while the music of this band may only appeal to those who are able to appreciate both metal and jazz, it stands as being one of the most enduring masterpieces of the metal fusion genre, and I can only hope that they do not stop with their debut.

One thing no one can deny, by listening to this album, how excellently prepared these musicians are; especially the rhythm section, with jazz influenced drummer Stef Broks, the virtuos bass player Robin Zeilhorst, with his amazing fretless bass that enriches the music, a style that is obviously inspired by legend Jaco Pastorius. The guitars are also phenomenal, thanks to Cynic guitarist Tymon Kruidenier, with also Michel Nienhuis from Sengaia; thanks to them the riffs are extremely complex and technical, and when they play the slower parts they have a much jazzier touch.

Since this features members that all come from prog metal bands, the main style of the album is of course this genre, but what makes it really original is the surprisingly massive fusion and math metal influences. The rhythms are very fast and esoteric, the melodies very challenging to listen to, because of the guitars, and even the bass at times. The production is clean, the mixing is perfect, so what is wrong with this debut? First of all, I noticed that this album has a weak structure: It sounds a lot like a cluster of songs that frankly have all a similar structure, and they kind of sound all the same, so I'm not really understanding the philosophy of this organization. The only thing that makes the album a little more solid is the presence of the two parts of "All That Surrounds", and both parts are very similar even melodically. Also, some songs turn me off, just for the fact that they aren't at all memorable or hardly have any emotion or attitude, and so I forgot about them pretty quickly. It sound just like a few musicians just jamming for 44 minutes, with most definitely some very good ideas that come along. I don't deny that many parts are mind blowing, like the entire opener "Ripple Of A Tear", or even the next track, "Time And It's Changes", but other songs just aren't as good, said in a much more simple way. Another one of my favorites is the closing piece "An Elusive Need", with just great musicianship, especially from the guitars.

An album that I partially enjoyed, but didn't light my day in a particular way. "Exivious" is most definitely an ambitious project, but they really should try to put a little more feeling to the songs (please keep in mind that I'm a huge prog metal fan, and that I don't mind technical virtuosity at all, if used correctly). If you're a big fan of this genre, you should check this out, but don't expect too much from it.