ANIMALS AS LEADERS

Tosin Abasi's Animals as leaders is more like a project then a real band. This album is a vehicle for showing his amazing skills as a guitar-player and his daring composition style. The result is an extremely fast instrumental metal-fusion album with a sort of modern approach to Holdsworth's guitar techniques. All compositions are combinations of ideas and there's no concept, advanced song-writing or progressive mind-set to be found. We are listening this music for the bizarre technique and some interesting harmonic findings that actually do remind us of other progressive metal acts. The time signatures also are intelligent. Some songs evoke words like 'technology' or 'future'.

The techniques of Tosin Abasi are however quite interesting. Not only does he play fast metal styled shreds, but he also has some tabbing techniques and clean solo's that are original. With his eight-string guitar (two extra lower strings) he wrote some short modern guitar pieces that stand out because of the variety in pitch, that was never heard on six-strings guitars. Interesting as it may be, don't expect catchy melodies.

Conclusion. A musician's album full of modern guitar pyrotechnics that is original enough to be worthwhile listening to, whilst some of the compositions are also interesting because of their dark fusion moods. Guitar players should have healthy self-esteem before getting into this. Not the kind of soulful prog I like, but good enough for three and a halve stars.

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