PULSAR

Sweet holy Moses these guys kick some serious, stinking hot sh*t.

I knew the three Germans were something special when I started listening back in '05 but Harnitz, Hoffmann, and Schwenen have only gotten better. Punch-drunk with power and ambition and finesse and all the chops to back it up, baby, please allow Counter-World Experience to tear you a new one with cold metal chunks of guitar, filament laserbeam synths, stellar percussives, sweet-ass odd meters kicked around like a soccer ball, concise but oh-so-tasty leads and chord progressions, Spock-like tridimensional resolutions, and a perfect production & group dynamic. That is if you have a taste for the tenuous mix of metal, fusion and electronic that so few pull off well. That anyone pulls off except these fellas. If Joe Satriani hooked-up with Klaus Schulze and Virgil Donati for a jam late one night, it might sound this good. Maybe. But I doubt it.

Rare these days for a band to open their offerings with a real ballbreaker but 'Pulsar' nails it. 'Bellatrix' lures us in with cracked chunks of concrete riffage and treats to a jazz trumpet completely out of place & time, and 'Hellos' starts as a maudlin chorale but just when you think they've dropped the ball the band breaks out the heavy arms, crack guitar player Ben Schwenen and guest guitarist Fountainhead (Tom Geldschläger) stepping-up. Superb jazz/fusion bit 'Merak' is a rare gem, exquisite, indispensable; 'Elektra' brilliant, incredible; Weepy 'Nebula' is sentimental James Bond fare but also solid melodic content, and bassist Steve DiGiorgio features on viking-metal throwback 'Alpha Serpentis'. 'Zaurak' follows-up nicely with a sister piece, drummer Hannes Grossmann [Blotted Science,Alkaloid] keeps time for the sublime 'Cygnus', and thrash monster 'Sirius' closes the current record by the best sideshow in progressive metal.

And yet not really groundbreaking, perhaps not even readily apparent in their genius, CWE is nevertheless simply one of the best tech-fusion bands in the world. The only thing bothering me is whether I want them to get more attention or remain a whispered-about cult group. The eternal question.

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