UNEXPECT

"In a Flesh Aquarium" was a highly complex, technically well played, and experimental avantgarde metal release and it has received a lot of praise over the years, and not surprisingly Unexpect have chosen a relatively similar sound and approach on "Fables of the Sleepless Empire", although "Fables of the Sleepless Empire" sound a little less chaotic and polished compared to its direct predecessor. The vocals vary between female semi-operatic cleans, male cleans, and a varity of male extreme metal vocal styles (growling, snarling, screaming...etc.). In addition to the vocals, drums, guitars, bass, violin, piano, and samples are the instruments used to create the sound. The instrumental part of the music features elements of death metal, black metal, and symphonic metal, and often features classical music influenced sections or elements. All packed into abstract and complex avantgarde metal structures and dissonance. The tracks are ever changing and they take a while to get into and remember.

"Fables of the Sleepless Empire" features a clear, powerful, and detailed sound production, which perfectly suits the material and which help bring all elements of the band´s music to the listener. Upon conclusion "Fables of the Sleepless Empire" may suffer a bit from not being as surprising to the listener as "In a Flesh Aquarium" was, when it was released, but it´s overall another high quality release from Unexpect, and if you enjoyed the sound of "In a Flesh Aquarium", this one is a safe bet. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives).

What I really enjoy about this album is how truly technically efficient it all is from so many genres, kinda like Mr Bungle's Disco Volante, but with a higher focus on metal and amping up the craziness of it all. This album feels like an hour-long panic attack, bursting through several different seams that rarely, if ever, lets up, and the band plays this to their strengths. Lots of bouncy riffs that balance between tech death, to symphonic metal, to djent, etc and etc. with drum lines that batter you in the head. It really creates an enigmatic, and really fun experience similar to stuff from Others By No One, though that band is a lot younger than this group.

I also have to marvel at the vocals. I think it isn't how they sound and sing that makes me really like them, but how they just seem to keep up with this wild and frantic music that it all just seems so impressive to me. They range from angelic singing, to rough and crazy screams and growls, to stuff that kinda made me think David Tibet of Current 93 was singing on here. All of it is just fun to me, and I think what is found here is some high class experimental metal.

My one problem with this album, though, is that they seem to throw everything at the wall and hope it sticks with most, if not all of these songs. Most of the time it works really nicely, but other times I just think there is too much going on in one song that it over-stimulates me. This album definitely won't leave you bored, but, to me, cutting the madness a bit in some moments here and not trying new things too quickly can make this already entertaining album into a freak show masterpiece.

This album is not even close to being boring in the slightest. It is one of most fun metal records I have heard, and while I do think there is sometimes a bit too much, I think overall it all just works out as a highly invigorating record that any fan of more avant garde metal should look into.

There is a very high level of progressiveness to this music. There must be at least 3 lead singers here, a nice female voice, and regular male voice and a growly voice, singing in a rather chaotic way throughout, sometimes together, sometimes not. The music has that crazy chaotic feel of SGM, but with a bit more operatic feel and less structure. Just know that you can't expect to settle on any one style for long, because this metal is anything but typical and always changing even from one note to the next on occasion.

The music is difficult to penetrate because of its complexity and denseness. I don't care for the growling vocals on this one, but the Tech Metal aspects are great. The use of violin throughout is a big plus too. It makes me interested in listening to their later work, but as far as this EP is concerned, it is too reminiscent of black metal even with the level of progressive complexity. There are plenty of surprises hidden throughout like the piano lead in the middle of 'In Velvet Coffins' but things change so much that nothing has a chance to develop anywhere. This version of 'Chromatic Chimera' is step in the right direction, but it isn't really metal either as it is a nice piano interlude with some music box aspects towards the end, which just seems like it was tacked on to the end of the album for variety.

I definitely prefer the better development in SGM's music, even though there are some aspects that are similar. This is why I am interested in looking to their future works. The best track is the aforementioned 'In Velvet Coffins', but again, even in the complexities of Avant Prog music, which this does approach, you still need some development and some feeling of direction to appeal to me. Nevertheless, the musicianship is amazing, so this is a strong 3 star EP.

Infused with bombastic metal riffs and black metal shrieks, ghoulish chants or histrionic outbursts of tormented recitations, the unhinged male vocal contributions of SyriaK and Artagoth are diluted in their abrasiveness by the female vocal loveliness of Leïlindel's folklore femininity and newbie Borboen's Paganini flair of violin playing with a style more often reminiscent of a circus gypsy having an extremely high-octane episode. In between it all lies the unique 9-stringed bass lines of ChaotH that connect the dots but only after an enterprising journey through several progressive tornado run riffs of spirited vigor. And then add on the strange lethargic intros that ratchet up the tension while languishing in tranquil torpidity before launching into tumultuous musical terror that bombards the listener with incessant excess all the while creating just enough of a melodic hook to keep your head from exploding. Ah, uneasy listening at its zenith, UNEXPECT raise the bar of musical complexity like a pole runner carrying the Olympic torch all the way up Mt Everest in under 61 minutes.

To say the least, there is nothing to compare UNEXPECT's music to except, of course, UNEXPECT itself. While very much in vein of "In A Flesh Aquarium," FABLES does seem to be more focused which is neither good or bad but merely different. The main difference being in the fact that on FABLES musical motifs are allowed to retain a longer shelf life as every musical idea in the universe isn't as prevalent as on "Aquarium" where a listening experience is equivalent to riding in the eye of a tornado and watching all the notes whizz by in utterly unpredictable ways. Here at least, despite being bombarded by the myriad mega-stimuli, there is a concerted effort to let the hooks sink in a little deeper before the ultimate uprooting and casting off into turbulent atmospheric disturbances. True to their vision with a slighty more polished touch, UNEXPECT retain the crown of most chaotic crazy and creative masters of the avant-garde metal universe. While this one took me longer to gestate in my psyche before the alien forces hatched, i find FABLES OF THE SLEEPLESS EMPIRE to be equally as brilliantly inventive as "Aquarium." Although it would take another five years and no albums later, the capricious creative ones announced that the band would continue no longer. Now THAT was truly UNEXPECT-ed!

If you missed the second Unexpect album (In the Flesh Aquarium), Fables probably slipped under your radar, too. After all, Unexpect doesn't have nearly the reach of other groups in the prog-metal vanguard; however, if you have any desire to hear the true sound of musical mastery within the genre... do yourself a favor and check out this release right away.

Fables is an hour of gorgeous pandemonium. Songs are packed with twists and turns, juggling the intense combination of sounds with ease. Time signatures, tempo, and tonal changes abound. It's metal music, undeniably, but Unexpect is also very playful. The result isn't the sort of melodic riffing you'd expect, but instead a gymnastic combination of sounds that makes the experience unique. The musicianship is at a level that really makes the group difficult to compare... because much of what they're doing is so much more ambitious than "normal" metal.

Vocals are handled by a combination of singers, usually simultaneously. Feminine vocals take the "lead," which is a very relative thing to say. I guess she's the lead because she's one of the few things the listener can grab hold of as being "normal." Other vocals are a combination of highly characterized impish growling, sarcastic crooning or robotic recitation. Trust me... it makes sense when you're listening.

Fables is noise, a lot of noise, but achieves the rare accomplishment of being able to beat the listener senseless while keeping their attention and leaving them wanting more. If you enjoy metal music, this is practically a mandatory purchase. You'll not have experienced anything quite like it, at least not at this level of metal/creativity/poetry. Avant- garde group's like Mr.Bungle may draw some comparisons, but I think these are a stretch. Fables of the Sleepless Empire takes you places few other groups can.

Songwriting: 5 - Instrumental Performances: 5 - Lyrics/Vocals: 5 - Style/Emotion/Replay: 5

First, if you don't already know, uneXpect is essentially an avant-garde metal band that combines thrash, black, progressive and symphonic metal styles with a bit of traditional metal thrown in. Add to that some excellent classical piano used frequently and some violin with strong gypsy music tendencies, and some industrial sounds sprinkled with bits of circus type music and a trio of voices that are comprised of clean female vocals and male vocals that go from growls and snarls to shouts and System of a Down-like Tasmanian Devil whatevers. And now perhaps you can begin to imagine what this band must sound like.

There is simply nothing in my collection that comes close to this although if this album were a mountain peak then partway up we might find bands like Suspyre, Disillusion, Dark Suns, or even a bit of Haken. When the mood gets mellower with piano and touches of industrial, and female vocalist Leïlindel sings slowly and clearly, I'm reminded a bit of some White Willow. I've read reviews elsewhere that mention bands like Arcturus, Ulver and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, so if you're familiar with those (I'm not) you might also have a clue about uneXpect's sound here.

It's not easy to describe the songs or the music well. All the styles I mentioned about are mostly mixed together in nearly every song. The image that comes to my mind most often is a kind of horror puppet show where the scary puppets look like they are ready to slice your face open but are actually just having fun singing their bizarre songs. Maybe like a "Nightmare Before Christmas" deal without any suggestion of cute or adorable spooks. There's a feeling of insanity and intensity as the songs careen from musical passage to passage, often changing in only four bars. You can have a symphonic metal segment that is threatening to veer into thrash while a tasteful piano plays along or a quick exchange of shouts and growls while a violin swings and swerves over blasting double bass drum kicks and some progressive guitar riff is flying out like bats from a cave at dusk. A song may suddenly break into a bass solo, a violin solo, a piano solo, a frantic sax solo, a circus music segment, an eastern European folk bit, or absolute chaos and cacophony. Then you might abruptly get a dose of intense metal polka swiftly followed by voices calling and chanting, or some other seemingly incongruous and totally unexpected musical motif. For about 4 to 8 bars. Then it changes again.

It might sound like complete swill and truthfully to some people it does. Ratings I encountered went anywhere from praising this album to blue heaven with upwards of 92% scoring, to middle ground ratings with comments about some excellent songs and several failed efforts, to the album being a complete heap of rubbish. Some reviewers claimed the band had tried too hard to be avant-garde and simply thrown haphazardly together a grocery list of ingredients. Others say it is all done well but doesn't sound original. As for my opinion, I find the album an excellent listen in part because it's so crazy but also because the actual playing is achingly top notch and it is incredible that so many different sounds can be woven together to make an insanely wild collection of music. I admit that at moments I wish the vocals wouldn't sound so much like a death comedy musical, but on the other hand, that's part of the charm of the album.

Regarding the individual songs, I've read people praising "Chromatic chimera", "Desert Urbania" and "Psychic Jugglers" but being less kind to other tracks. I actually found things to like in every track, including the sometimes maligned "Feasting Fools" and overlooked "Summoning Scenes". Special mention should also go to "Silence 011010701" for its industrial sound and powerful symphonic conclusion.

This is not an album for everybody. There are no "Living After Midnight" sing-a-longs on here. It's intense, ultra-busy, and possibly even exhausting. It might take to you ten listens to enjoy or only one. Or you might hate it. I'm rather impressed with it and can enjoy playing the album from front to back or pulling selected tracks off for daily mixed playlists. If possible, I'd like to get one of their two other albums. Hail to the mad marionette musical masters of Montreal!

UNEXPECT was already mastering the art of blending the classical influenced black metal that reminds me of early Ulver with its often operatic vocal tradeoffs with black metal riffs crossed with a healthy dose of death metal growls, riffage and intensity. There is also plenty of traditional metal influence in the mix as well. There also exists lots of progressive metal riffage as well. On board with all the metal influence is a generous dose of Chopin inspired piano runs and to a lesser degree at this early stage the gypsy folk violins but they do appear here and there. While the female vocals on this album contributed only on this debut by Elda are mostly kept in the back of the mix, she does take the lead at times. The songs are generally quite lengthy and go through many changes but there are much more recognizable musical patterns at this stage of the game and for anyone who finds their later works much too busy and impossible to comprehend, they should start here to hear where they are coming from and how they evolved their sonic chaos into the craziness it would become. The music on UTOPIA is roughly 80% extreme metal with classically inspired melodies mixed with traditional metal. The gypsy influences are minimal and the violin plays a subordinate role for the most part.

I've fallen for this band but i am finding that the debut album is no exception. I have read countless gripes about the horrible production. I have the 2006 remastered version which i don't find outstanding but it doesn't sound horrible either. I have not heard the original recording so all i can do is suggest to try the newer version if that was a reason for not liking this. Musically this is really beautiful. It doesn't seem like a mess at all. The compositions are well thought out and they flow very nicely together. The lack of future busyness ensures that this is a smoother listen and one that can be listened to less attentively to unravel its mysteries. In fact, there are no mysteries which makes this a great place to begin to appreciate UNEXPECT's unique take on making avant-garde metal. To me this sounds like a more aggressive version of what Akphaezya would create later on and i would guess that this was an influence for them. Despite this having a running time of 65:34 i always have to listen to the entire album once i put it on. This is a mildly avant-garde metal that will appeal to those who love that style of metal that retains the dominance of the melody. Guess i'm in a lonely room with this one :P 3.5 rounded up

It is also clear on this album that the template for their sound is based on classical music and it sounds like these musicians are classical trained and educated because they play this everything in a virtuosic manner. The piano runs can remind you of Mozart or Chopin while the violin sounds a lot like Paganini. On the metal side it can sound like traditional, death or thrash. Since the tracks are less busy they sound more melodic in a straight forward way as opposed to a poly-melodic one. One track "In Velvet Coffins We Sleep" is a remake of a track from the debut album while another "Chromatic Chimera" is a stripped down piano version of the track on "Aquarium."

All in all this doesn't sound like it should be an essential recording but I have really grown to love this band and I find myself picking this album up a lot because it is just so perfectly done. It certainly doesn't measure up to the following albums in complexity but that matters not for it is well-crafted and an enjoyable listen with a greater emphasis on classical melodic textures with subordinating metal and other musical genres. Not a masterpiece but a very strong album. Stripped down or gussied up, UNEXPECT is a band that delivers a unique musical experience unlike any other and this transitory EP is no exception.

IN A FLESH AQUARIUM has the density of a black hole while providing layers of accessibility all strung together and then like a wormhole taking you to completely different galaxies at the speed of light with occasional oxygen breaks for sanity's sake. This album demands constant attention in order to follow the succession of a plethora of sounds and ideas that come and go like a school of fleeing fish chased by a band of hungry barracudas. One listen or even twenty will hardly suffice to grasp this demanding project that is perhaps one of the most complex pieces in all of rock history being more akin to ambitious symphonies by classical legends like Prokofiev or Rachmaninoff in terms of complexity than anything in rock, metal or most of the other genres they use to weave this sonic masterpiece.

UNEXPECT is a breath of fresh air in a musical world that tends to favor complacency over completely unfettered artistic expression and evolution. They expand their sonic tentacles into so many musical genres and reel them in until they become so intertwined in their configuration that just like physical chemistry they have fused enough different particles together so successfully that it could now be considered a new element on the musical equivalent of the periodic table. What do we call this strange musical beast in which lies the sum of various parts including progressive, technical death, black and melodic metal as well as classical, dark cabaret, opera, jazz, funk, electro, ambient, noise, circus and gypsy music? Just like a newly synthesized element that tends to go under a generic name, we have no vocabulary and simply call it avant-garde metal although experimental eclectic metal might be slightly closer to describing this sonic stew.

This is quite the treasure trove for the musical ambitious (and lovers of 9-stringed basses) and guaranteed to intrigue and bewilder. To surprise and perplex. It has the brutal aggressiveness of death metal while it also has the sweet sensual vocals of Leilindel and melodic violins. It is contrast. It is a musical federation. It is utter madness that is domesticated but not tamed. Fiercely independent and proud, UNEXPECT went where no other band was looking. Although other bands have tried to incorporate so many genres, few have succeeded. Mr. Bungle certainly achieved that lofty feat but precious few other bands have managed the successful amalgamation that constitutes a separate species. UNEXPECT have emerged as a band with an ambition that actually surpasses that of Bungle and pulls it off for those patient enough to explore the intricacies of this demanding and seemingly inaccessible fusionfest. Highly recommended for those who love a musical 3-ring circus of the 21st century which continues to reward the listener in as many different ways as the sounds incorporated in its mix.