INK COMPATIBLE

Ink Compatible is an extremely complex album and will probably not find appreciation by all prog-fans. I found it very interesting after my first listen, but only after repeated listening I was able to fully enjoy it.

The first song Aquanet which starts with the dialing sound of a modem fitting perfectly with the overall theme computer & internet is showing already where it's going to. A quite insane and high tension composition telling the story about an internet chat. This was the one I had the biggest problems with in the beginning since it's a bit too much in the vein of old WATCHTOWER recordings which are not that much "my cup of tea." But from track 2 onwards the album is getting really enjoyable at least for people like me loving mind blowing riffs in a breathtaking high speed and abrupt tempo and rhythm changes. The only point I still prefer a bit their first all instrumental album is in fact Jason McMaster's voice which is fitting not really perfectly in some parts. Even Daniel Gildenlöw's vocals in Melissa's Friend are not as brilliant as one knows from his recordings with POS. Anyway I think the vocal parts are only there for the main reason to provide some time to the listener for recovering from the very demanding and exhausting instrumental parts. Without having the booklet in front of you the quite weird and ironic lyrics are very difficult to follow. But after reading them one gets the impression that it's better to concentrate fully on the excellent instrumental parts. The music is very diverse and there are influences from multiple genres present. Some parts are rather reminiscent of music by FRANK ZAPPA or MR.BUNGLE than of metal.

As a SUMMARY I can say apart from the vocals this album is really a masterpiece in technical metal (or sometimes called math metal as well) and it's very refreshing to listen to an adventurous and inventive band like SPASTIC INK in these days of dozens of "clone band" all sounding very similar. I'd like to tell every fan of this sub-genre not to hesitate and to buy it immediately. Nevertheless due to the mentioned minor flaws I can only rate it with 4 (4,5) stars!

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