dtguitarfan Animals as Leaders is one of those bands that completely took me by surprise. I've heard a lot of extraordinary music, and plenty of mediocre music, but no matter who told me these guys were amazing, I wouldn't have been prepared for what was to come. They are completely unique - I'd describe their style as "Progressive Jazz/Metal/Techno Fusion". Or something like that. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this band is that there are only 3 members, and no bassist. They are strictly instrumental. The lead guitarist of the band, Tosin Abasi, has developed a unique style of guitar playing where he combines guitar playing techniques with bass playing techniques, and employes the use of an 8 stringed guitar that has a bass string or two. I highly recommend looking up Tosin Abasi on youtube sometime ? it will be one of the most amazing musical feats you've ever witnessed, I promise. When I listen to Animals as Leaders, I find it hard to go back to listening to anyone else - this music is so beautifully complex that after hearing it everything else seems less amazing, and often I must listen to something simplistic and soothing to sort of cleanse the palette, if you will. In this, their first album, Animals as Leaders has this amazing method of building up an agressive soundscape filled with dirty heavy riffs and dissonance that builds and crescendos until you almost can't take it, and then all of a sudden they abbruptly pull back, shocking the listener with the beautiful contrast. The technicality of the riffage is simply astounding, and Tosin Abasi pulls off feats of musicality that I never thought possible. Behind all of this, drummer Navene Koperweis astounds with his layering, thunderous rhythm section. This album is one of those albums where I found that on first listen, certain songs stood out to me while others I didn't like so much, but after subsequent listens my perspective would change and I would have new favorites after each listen. This album is a perspective changing masterpiece.

dtguitarfan Animals as Leaders is one of those bands that completely took me by surprise. I've heard a lot of extraordinary music, and plenty of mediocre music, but no matter who told me these guys were amazing, I wouldn't have been prepared for what was to come. They are completely unique - I'd describe their style as "Progressive Jazz/Metal/Techno Fusion". Or something like that. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this band is that there are only 3 members, and no bassist. They are strictly instrumental. The lead guitarist of the band, Tosin Abasi, has developed a unique style of guitar playing where he combines guitar playing techniques with bass playing techniques, and employes the use of an 8 stringed guitar that has a bass string or two. I highly recommend looking up Tosin Abasi on youtube sometime - it will be one of the most amazing musical feats you've ever witnessed, I promise. When I listen to Animals as Leaders, I find it hard to go back to listening to anyone else - this music is so beautifully complex that after hearing it everything else seems less amazing, and often I must listen to something simplistic and soothing to sort of cleanse the palette, if you will. Weightless is the second album by AAL, and in this album we find they have toned down the aggressive passages just a bit, and explored their Jazz Fusion side a little bit more I think. There is more of that electronica sound this time around as well. You will hear Tosin experiment with new techniques that did not appear on the first album.

Time Signature Do not go gently...

Genre: instru-djent-al

One of the hottest and most sensational movements within the universe of progressive metal these days is probably the djent movement, which has received a lot of media-attention over the last year. There is a lot of interesting djent-based progressive metal out there, and Animals as Leaders' "Weightless" is definitely instrumental djent at its finest.

From beginning to end, the release takes the listener on a journey through a dynamic, but also incredibly coherent and consistent, musical landscape, combining mindboggling odd-metered djent grooves with mellow and ambient passages - often accompanied by beats and other elements from ambient electronica (do not ask me to pinpoint a specific electronica-genre, I am not very well-versed in electronica genre category). Thus the music takes you up and down and in and out and back and forth constantly, but it is all bound together by a certain consistency in sound and approach, and this makes the album incredibly enjoyable to listen to. Most of the tracks are, with an average length of 4 minutes, actually pretty short for progressive metal, bur listening to the entire album is pretty much like listening to one long track, and it is music that you can really lose yourself in, because of the dynamism and consistency. There is also a sort of twisted sense of melody - which is particularly evident in 'Do Not Go Gently', which is a purely amazing track.

The musicianship is top notch, and I particularly enjoy the guitar solos which for the most part are incredibly virtuous, drawing on jazz fusion and jazz rock, and, of course, the capacity of the musicians for executing clock-work precise complex rhythmic figures is nothing less than impressive. And the great thing is that the music contains atmosphere, melody and virtuosic "wankery", and it is overall very expressive, so it should have a wide appeal within the community of lovers of progressive metal (I am not sure how accessible the album is to the mainstream though).

I can imagine that some might find the production to be cold and sterile and too polished, but this type of production has become an integrated feature of djent music, and I think it works to the advantage of the music, because a fuzzy production would probably prevent the listener from really enjoying all the details and quirks of this music. So, yes, the production is perhaps polished and sterile, but for the purpose of this album, this is the way to go production-wise.

Animals as Leaders' "Weightless" is an amazing effort and a challenging but very enjoyable work of progressive music, which should appeal, not only to djent fans, but more broadly to fans of progressive metal (I think that fans of jazz-tinged progressive metal will in particular enjoy this album).

(review originally posted at seaoftranquility.org)

bonnek Shredding for a new society.

Initially I thought of trying to do this review without mentioning the dj...-word. Dj.... being an entirely inadequate onomatopoeia intended to describe what the rhythm-guitars are supposed to sound like. Inadequate to a non-English speakers at least as the English spelling simply doesn't have the consistency to give me a clue on how I'm supposed to pronounce 'djent', like 'gentleman'? Then no, this is definitely not what the guitars sound like. Clinical, over-processed and too distorted, that's what they sound like.

Anyway, if you can do without the tagging, this is simply a modern instrumental Prog Metal album with some jazz influences, indebted to Meshuggah but with the extreme parts left out. The influences from modern day King Crimson in the guitar arpeggio's add a nice touch that definitely distinguishes this band from other bands in the field. Something that is really welcome as there are lots of projects in this style. AAL is one of the best loved examples and the praise is certainly understandable from a technical perspective: this involves all the virtuosity and compositional standards that fans expect from this sort of music.

But despite the interesting ideas the album is too much a "play safe", hardly stretching outside the previously set standards for instrumental jazz-metal fusion, and indulging way too much in pointless shredding. Worst of all is how emotionless and sterile this music is, as if it was made by an - admittedly very fast - computer program. It sounds as if it involved more hours spent on a laptop then actually playing instruments. No, excuse me while I want more spontaneity, interaction, dynamics and tension in instrumental music.

All objections aside, if you're a Prog Metal fan you can't go wrong with this. If you aren't a Prog Metal but still want to check out modern instrumental metal, I'd rather recommend other bands such as Octopus (Chile), Excivious, Chimp Spanner or Cloudkicker. I'd say AAL is music for musicians rather then for listeners. Anyway, the ideas are there, cut out a few solos and I'd still give it 4 stars.

Negoba The Most Important Metal Album Since....A Very Long Time

Music has taken on a very new look in the internet age. File sharing and mp3 have taken the lion's share of attention during this time, but other factors are making a dramatic impact on how music is created in the new millenium. The first and most obvious development is the evolution of high level home recording platforms. The second is youtube and internet video, which has given young musicians access both to an enormous variety of lessons right in their bedroom, and to each other. Animals as Leaders is, to my ear, the first group to produce a truly revolutionary sound as a result of the evolutionary new territory created by this computer age of music.

Drawing on djent, itself an internet phenomena populated by mainly home recording artists with a liking for math metal pioneers Meshuggah, Animals as Leaders is the solo project of the king of the eight string guitar, engineered by the close runner up. Tosin Obasi is simply an unworldly talent, with mastery of virtually every shred technique under his belt. Using exclusively 7 and 8 string guitars, he has expanded his pallette further by using two handed techniques similar to those of Tony Levin and other Chapman Stick players. Both he and engineer Bulb (Misha Monsoor) have an enormous knowledge base and have devoured and assimilated previous heroes such as Allan Holdsworth, Malmsteen, Vai, and Frank Gambale.

But talent and technique don't make music. It simply deepens and broadens the tools available. What Obasi does on ANIMALS AS LEADERS (unlike Bulb on his project PERIPHERY) is to take the djent platform and then launch to completely new realms. In fact, the album doesn't sound like godfather Meshuggah at all. Instead, it is a kind of heavy math jazz. It is consciously modern, with some sounds seemingly programmed, but actually produced by the guitar technique itself. Like Meshuggah, the music is cut up into a myriad of odd time morsels, making the music seem to flow freely over a bed of continuous eighths or sixteenths. (Not unlike the piano intro to FIRTH OF FIFTH).

The two things that make this music something beyond a technical showcase are energy and beauty. Without a doubt, this music is invigorating. I use it for workouts, I use it to pep me up. In fact, I think anyone with a tolerance for heavy music could enjoy this album without any care for the technical aspects. What's more the jazz elements weave in an out seamlessly, and here is where the beauty enters. There is a true sense of melody and mood. The tapping extravaganza in the opener "Tempting Time" is more of a spacey trip than a showcase, though in that respect it is mindboggling.

The only downside is that Tosin's sound, while overwhelming, can start to lack variety by the end of the album. While one could start on any song and be overwhelmed with the album's power, by the 8th song the listener knows the main ideas of what's going on. There is a nice acoustic break on track 11, "Modern Meat," but there is a bit of samey-ness on the other tracks. But the sound is so rich and powerful, that while this may not be a perfect album, it is without a doubt in my mind a masterpiece.

If you like complex music, get it. If you like metal, get it. If you like guitar, get it. If you like prog, get it. Get it?