PRRIMO, THE

I got this EP quite a while back but I never really paid much attention to it until after Random released their first full length album, Todo.s los Colores del. After listening to that album and really enjoying it, I decided to come back and give this first EP another try. Coming in at about 22 minutes, "Prrimo, The" is a nice little chunk of progressive extreme metal, and while I think that the songwriting is a little less developed than on Random's later album, it's still an engaging listen and a very impressive display of musicianship.

"The Most Pleasant Nightmare" begins with a fairly minimalistic percussion part before a guitar riff comes in. This riff is elaborated upon with bass and more percussion and before long clean vocals enter the mix. After a while the vocalist belts out a long scream after which the music slows down a little bit and there's a section of growled vocals. The music has a very math-metal feel to it, with a variety of rapidly switching rhythms and motifs that still feel very technically accomplished if not 100% perfectly cohesive. Midway through the track the heaviness pulls back a bit and there's a more delicate guitar solo which is soon joined by more clean vocals. It's a nice contrast with the heavier beginning of the track and the vocals are very good, but it doesn't totally gel with the super-technical sound of the first section. Overall it's very well performed, though, even if the songwriting doesn't seem quite 100% to me yet.

"Walk The Twisted Line" is next, beginning immediately with a pounding, heavy riff that's joined pretty shortly by vocals. The thing that I really enjoy about Random's vocals is that their vocalist doesn't just have a "clean" voice and a "growled" voice; he sings very much on a spectrum, and how distorted the singing in often reflects the emotion of the music. It's a neat technique that I haven't heard too much. Musically the song switches between very heavy, almost mechanical riffing and slower, more emotive sections. I personally find these slower sections much more effective, but I've never been a huge fan of that kind of heavily riff-based tech-metal to begin with. Nonetheless, it is very well done, and I think "Walk The Twisted Line" is probably a little more cohesive than was the first track.

"Expressive Logic" is the last track on this little EP, as well as the longest. Beginning with a spoken word sample, the track starts off on a kind of heavy, jazzy feel, with a groovy bass line and some wild drumming behind the guitar riffs. There's an almost 4 minute instrumental section that begins the track before some very raw sounding vocals enter. The riffs in this section are some of the heaviest on the entire album, and I really can't stress how insane the drumming is in this track. About halfway through the spoken word section returns, seamlessly interwoven with the singing, which is just as brutal as the guitar part. With about three minutes left another instrumental section starts, and the precision of the musicians is really very impressive. The mood changes after about a minute, pulling itself out of the bone- crushing riffing and taking on a much cleaner sound, which the vocals also reflect when they reappear. Intensity builds back up as the song reaches its conclusion, and finally the track ends with a drone of guitar distortion. It seems like a bit of a sudden cutoff, but it's hard to fault such a good song for such a minor flaw.

So in my mind, at least, the last track is really the highlight here, but the first two tracks certainly aren't bad either. Insofar as this is Extreme Prog metal, it probably falls a bit closer to "extreme" than "prog," but I still think most prog fans should find plenty to like, especially in the final ten minute track. A nice little chunk of music and a great demonstration of what Random is capable of.

3/5