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Reviews

Blotted Science: The machinations of dementia

02/11/07  ||  Global Domination

This review was written by ex-staffer/cocksmoker Seker.

Anyone remember Watchtower? Yeah, they were awesome, right? Kinda blows they only put out only two albums, huh? Well, what would you say if I was to tell you that Ron Jarzombek, the mastermind behind Watchtower’s second album, is now a member of an instrumental prog/death/thrash band?

Well, fuck, I hope you at least got a bit hot and bothered by that announcement. I mean, I normally can’t stand technical wanky stuff (I’m more of a Darkthrone guy, to put it lightly), and yet, this stuff blew my face off when I first heard it. Why? Well, I said that I disliked technicality for the sake of technicality, right? But really, that’s just the thing. This isn’t technical for the sake of being technical: the guitar, bass, and drum parts are technical because the composition of the music requires them to be. Really, it’s technical metal done right.

Also, about the whole instrumental thing… it actually helps this kind of music. I mean, fucking Watchtower! They were great and all, and so were bands like Helstar, but do you really need some 80s fucktard yelping along in falsetto to the music? It just takes up room in the mix, room that should be allocated to the guitars, bass (yes, there is bass), and drums.

And boy, do they make good use of that extra space. First off, not only do we have the absolute guitar wizardry of Jarzombek, but we’ve also got Alex Webster from Cannibal Corpse. Let me tell you, Mr. Webster is absolutely wasting his time in Cannibal Corpse; this stuff is way more interesting (and he gets to spend quite a bit more time in the spotlight). Seriously, do we really need one more boring death metal band? Fuck no! We need more shit like this.

The drums, handled by some dude from that horrible band Behold the Acropolis (a great example of how to go for this kind of sound and completely fuck it up), are tastefully done. There’s no real showing off, but the fills manage to hold my attention, and the beat has a nice ambient quality to it. Think of the really weird beat explosions Fenriz did on “Goatlord”, but with more of a technical bent, and you wouldn’t be too far off.

The guitar/other guitar/bass interplay is the focus here, obviously. The music as a whole is very intricate and dense; it doesn’t really feel like Alex and Ron are soloing so much as they are coming up with really complex riffs. It’s a bit like the really long musical phrases that Gorguts used on “Obscura”, but less noise-oriented and more melodic.

That’s not to say there isn’t any groove here; on the contrary, there’s quite a few rather nasty groove riffs that wouldn’t sound out of place on an old Grave album. Really though, the sound here isn’t quite death, nor is it really thrash or prog. The music here is it’s own thing: death metal’s visceral groove and chromaticism, the sheer speed of thrash, and the technicality of progressive metal all mesh together to form a demented machination of a completely new genre.

Really, this album has rekindled my hope for metal. It’s the best of the 2007 albums I’ve heard by a fucking longshot, and it’s rather hard to describe why other than it fulfills all the ambition that the label of instrumental progressive metal entails, without any of the requisite pretentiousness. If you like the old bands that used to walk the line between technical thrash and jazzy death (Coroner, Watchtower, Atheist, Cynic), or if you’re into really weird death metal (Cadaver, Gorguts, Demilich), or if you’re into just plain weird music, get this album.

9 atmospheric technical thrashing instrumental death metal albums out of 10.

  • Information
  • Released: 2007
  • Label: EclecticElectric
  • Website: Blotted Science Online
  • Band
  • Ron Jarzombek: guitars
  • Alex Webster: bass
  • Charlie Zeleny: drums
  • Tracklist
  • 01. Synaptic Plasticity
  • 02. Laser Lobotomy
  • 03. Brain Fingerprinting
  • 04. Oscillation Cycles
  • 05. Activation Synthesis Theory
  • 06. REM
  • 07. Night Terror
  • 08. Bleeding in the Brain
  • 09. Vegetation
  • 10. Narcolepsy
  • 11. EEG Tracings
  • 12. Sleep Deprivation
  • 13. The Insomniac
  • 14. Amnesia
  • 15. Adenosine Buildup
  • 16. Adenosine Breakdown

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