A HISTORY OF MADNESS

Thinking Plague's History of Madness demonstrates that a little thinking goes a long way. Often cited as being difficult, the fact is that none of the Plague's output has exactly been simple and accessible, and the avant-jazz stylings of this album don't feel like an enormous departure from past precedent. To my ears, each Thinking Plague album since the debut saw a fairly major development of their sound, but by this point they are more evolutionary than revolutionary, and this evolution takes them a little too far into the realms of complex technical execution without a distinct and strong idea behind it. Competent, but not classic.