IDEAS OF REFERENCE

Well, what do we have here? This is mathcore metal at its most extreme. In fact I believe this is extreme metal's version of free jazz with Christopher Arp's wild frenzied manic guitar scales at a million miles an hour with Fred DeCoste's equally fast bass often backing it up with some kind of bop equivalent going on at times. Adam Frapolli's vocals are intense and as crazed as anything i've ever heard. Maybe this could be described as Meshuggah meets Elliot Sharp, Zeena Parkins and maybe Sun Ra with some Unexpect thrown in for good measure. It's just out there! Let's not leave out Greg Herman's drumming that is equally on par with the rest of the band changing jazzy drum rolls to blastbeats and back in the matter of nanoseconds. Whew! This is exhausting stuff.

Guitarist Christopher Arp demonstrates on "Death, I" and "Imogen's Puzzle" by slowing it down a bit that there is indeed some kind of jazz / metal fusion going on here. Whether these scales and chord progressions are made up or a hybrid of something is beyond me but there is definitely a pattern here and not just random noise. I am a warped individual and I actually like this as I am attracted to the furthest extremes that music has to offer. You know you got something wild if it makes Mr Bungle seem closer to Barbara Streisand than this! This kind of stuff is reserved for those special moods as I surely could not listen to this too often as it lacks diversity but as a short burst of extreme intense energy it delivers quite effectively.