IDEAS OF REFERENCE

This group is very talented, and their music is very complex, but it is completely unlisenable. The sound is obnoxious, and there is really nothing the listener can take from this. It is just a rampant series of riffs that seem to have no meaning beyond the complexity. These guys clearly have the ability to be something worthwhile, but they need to work on their songwriting. Psyopus's dexterity is on par with bands like The Dillinger Escape Plan, arguably the starter of the Tech-Metal/Core movement, but the latter's music has way more dimentions than the former's. Sure, Dillinger's early work was very relentless, but besides the fact that is was unprecedented, the drums had a jazzy feel to somewhat attenuate the simultaneous chaos. Ideas of Reference just sound like incessant paroxysms channeled through instruments. It is noisy and unbearable. I admire their skills, but the way they use those skills is not a way that I can appreciate or recommend. I can tolerate similar music, but there must be something there beyond technicality.

Ideas Of Reference is the debut album from american tech metal band Psyopus. I´ve already listened to and reviewed their second album Our Puzzling Encounters Considered. Our Puzzling Encounters Considered is one of those really rare albums that actually physically hurt to sit through. Constantly dissonant noisy riffing and out of this world complexity not unlike the relentless assault of a band like Behold...the Arctopus. Unlike the instrumental Behold...the Arctopus Psyopus has an screaming lead singer that sounds like he should be commited to a lunatic asylum. Needless to say that I wasn´t too impressed with that album and that the only redeeming thing I found about Our Puzzling Encounters Considered was the technical level of the musicians.

After listening to Ideas of Referance I can say that Psyopus played the same annoying style on this album. If I have to be fair I do enjoy ( boy that´s a hard word to say when talking about this band) Ideas of Reference a bit more than Our Puzzling Encounters Considered but that doesn´t mean that this is music I really appreciate. The only moments I do enjoy ( there it was again) is the more quiet moments like Imogen´s Puzzle. A short acoustic classical inspired piece. To top the album of There´s the ending of Bones To Dust. I hate that. First you get about four minutes of music and then several minutes of silence before we´re put right into some noisy and utterly useless secion. Plain annoying.

It´s funny because I´m usually very fond of extreme metal in any forms and shapes but this is just a bit too much for me. Give me a good Napalm Death, Anaal Nathrakh or Nasum album anytime but my life is simply too short for this kind of dissonant noisy hell.

The musicianship is outstanding on the album and it´s the only reason why I wont give this album 1 star. Dissonant chromatic riffing at the speed of light and complex drums and bass. This is music only for musicians who wants to know if it´s really possible to play these things.

The production is powerful and very good IMO.

I can´t stand this modern approach to tech metal and I would love to give this album 1 star but I´ll aknowledge the extremely tight musicianship and give this one a small 2 star rating. Not recommended if you got anything that resembles ears.

'Ideas Of Reference' - Psyopus (6/10)

Now, having listened to a lot of Psyopus' repertoire, I have become a little bit more familiar with the band's rather unique and dissonant style. My first encounter with the band found me almost repulsed. The second record I listened to was 'Odd Sense' which despite also being ridiculous in nature, had some really cool moments as well as a pleasing neo- classical composition.

Now where does Psyopus' debut full-length, 'Ideas Of Reference' stand in comparison?

Believe it or not, overall; this is the band's most cohesive and enjoyable effort, as there are actually a few moments where the band gives leave of its harsh vocals, and turns to focus in on their instrumental skills without interruption. It certainly does not have a song that truly compares to their neo classical masterpiece 'A Murder To Child' but there's enough here to please someone with a taste for the avant-garde,

For those not familiar with Psyopus' style, it's something you really have to listen to in order to understand. It's the same sort of systematic chaos that many progressive metal bands employ, taken to the utmost extreme (to the point of annoyance.) On that measure, the sheer excess and originality of the band must be lauded, but it's a bit difficult to listen to, especially at first!

'Ideas Of Reference' has some moments (and by far, my favourites) where there aren't any vocals, and the guitars take over and incorporate 'some' melody and groove into the mix. Other parts that are certainly the most accessible to the average listener are the clean (yes, clean) parts of some of the songs where Chris Arp shows he can do more than simply shred his listeners to oblivion. Still, even the clean parts are dissonant in nature, although it has the same sort of dissonant beauty that attracts some to the post-classical scene.

Despite the fact that there are things to enjoy here, I could only run through the album a few times before being forced to cut my listening sessions to a song's worth or two. As time went by however, things eventually clicked and what I found was an album that blew me away in all of the ways that other metal bands were too tame to. Theres alot of worth here, and someone willing to let go of whatever preconceptions they have of the band might find something really interesting and unique here.

What a mess this is, albeit an occasionally interesting mess. I guess it helps if you try to listen to the other mess of an album that is Dillinger Escape Plan's "Calculating Infinity", which somewhat better in the sense that there's melody there placed somewhat better in between music, even the songs are indistinguishable, but this seems to follow the footsteps of the aforementioned album. Like a lot of bands trying to follow a certain interesting concept, they tend to fail because they don't understand what to do with these ideas and worse is when the idea was pretty mediocre to begin with.

As much interesting as the drumming and the amount of impressive capabilities these musicians have here, they are tossing atonality and melody in the worse ways possible, almost like they were recording different songs and mixed them together by mistake. One time, they'll playing some jazz fusion, then they will go into atonality frenzy, then play some other scales. Worse is the lack of hooks here too. It makes most of these segments just go by just like that and become forgettable. The only thing that it succeeds is in making it kind of flow well a lot, but still, not quite pleasing.

Overall, if you dig atonality to Iwrestledabearonce degrees, more power to you, but this is just overall borrowed ideas that this band doesn't know how to use properly and end up being a rather forgettable and at times a chore. If this is their best, I don't want to figure out what else they have to offer.

3.5

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.