Warthur Atheist's comeback album Jupiter finds the band injecting the death metal back into their sound to an extent not heard since Piece of Time, with the jazz motifs of Unquestionable Presence or Elements serving the metal rather than existing in their own space. On the whole, it's a good and enjoyable listen, even though the technical death metal world has moved on since the band's glory days; my major criticism of the album is that after the first few songs it begins to feel a bit samey, something which was never the case on their earlier albums; a few quieter spots or the inclusion of moments where the jazz outweighs the death metal, as on their previous two albums, might have gone a long way to keeping things varied here.

Warthur Atheist continued in their jazz-metal direction on Elements, which is a decent album which I would recommend to any fan of their earlier albums - though I would say I think it's a mite bit less good than Unquestionable Presence. Part of this is due to the fact that the album is a little bit unfocused, whereas its predecessor seemed to be a bit tighter - possibly due to the band's desire to pay tribute to the late Roger Patterson that time around - and part of this is down to the vocals, on those tracks where they crop up, just being a little half-hearted, as though the band really wanted to do an all-instrumental album. Still, these are quibbles: it's a decent jazz-tech-death hybrid, and if you liked the earlier Atheist albums you should give it a go.

Warthur Unquestionable Presence is not an album which will yield its secrets on a single listen - but one listen will be enough to convince anyone that it's a groundbreaking moment in death metal, taking the technicality of the genre to the next level by including far more jazz-inspired time signatures and motifs to the music than the preceding Piece of Time (which was hardly simple and straightforward itself). At points, the music resembles the work of the Minutemen, whose work in fusing avant-jazz in hardcore punk was another great example of shoving some jazz in a genre which didn't seem built for it and coming up with brilliant results.

Warthur Atheist's debut album is an intriguing hint at what was to come. Though incorporating a wider range of influences and a tricker variety of time signatures than typical death metal groups of the era, the band's sound was at this point still rooted in the genre's typical sound (the more technical end of it, at any rate) and hadn't yet brought their avant-garde jazz influences to the fore as they would on Unquestionable Presence. What you get on Piece of Time, then, is a bizarre mixture of well-performed death metal with the occasional jazzy or proggy interjection inserted here or there.

Blink and you'll miss 'em, and might be left thinking "Wait, did Roger Patterson just play a Chris Squire bassline or am I just hearing things?", but pay attention and Piece of Time will unveil more and more signs that it's more than just another response to Possessed. Still, even more experimental territory was coming up.

UMUR "Atheist - The Collection" is a vinyl box-set release by legendary US, Florida based technical/ progressive death/ thrash metal act Atheist. The box-set was released in 2005 by Relapse Records and it is limited to 1000 copies. "Atheist - The Collection" contains the three early nineties groundbreaking album releases by Atheist on vinyl: "Piece of Time (1990)", "Unquestionable Presence (1991)" and "Elements (1993)". In addition to the three LPs there´s an added bonus 7´EP called "On They Slay" by the pre-Atheist act R.A.V.A.G.E. (Raging Atheists Vowing A Gory End) included in the box-set.

Atheist are without a doubt one of the most unique progressive extreme metal acts around. One of those few acts that others measure themselves by. The band started out using the R.A.V.A.G.E. name and the "On They Slay" 7´EP, which was recorded with the same lineup that recorded "Piece of Time", was originally released as a demo cassette tape in 1987. The band changed their name to Atheist soon after that and the first release under the Atheist monicker was the 1988 "Beyond" demo cassette tape. I find it a bit strange that "On They Slay" have been included on the box-set and not "Beyond" but I guess the former is the most rare item and probably the one most hardcore fans would be interested in. It has an important historical value but quality wise I consider it a bonus and not exactly the biggest treat included in box-set. Atheist, or R.A.V.A.G.E. if you will, showed great energy and promise on the demo but it was with "Piece of Time" that the band really showed the world what a unique act they were. "Piece of Time" mostly consists of old re-recorded demo material and it´s an intense technical death/ thrash album. Pretty rough around the edges but greatly enjoyable. Especially two songs stand out on the album and point towards the even more progressive sound of later albums. The title track and "I Deny".

Tragedy struck on the 12th of February 1991 when the band were involved in a touring van accident that took the life of bassist Roger Patterson. The band had layed down some demos of songs that would make up the bulk of the material on their second album "Unquestionable Presence" (those demos are included as bonus tracks on the 2005 Relapse Records CD remaster of "Unquestionable Presence") and after a period of grief they opted to continue the band and hired former Cynic bassist Tony Choy to complete the lineup. The result is the groundbreaking and IMO fantastic fusion influenced technical/ progressive death/ thrash metal release "Unquestionable Presence". With a playing time of 32:25 minutes this is one of the most compact, intense and technical metal albums out there. At the time it was released the only other act that had made anything resembling the fusion influenced technical metal style on this album was Watchtower. A band that Atheist openly admitted being great fans of.

The third full-length studio album "Elements" was recorded without founding member and drummer Steve Flynn but adds a third guitarist to the lineup in Frank Emmi. The drums on the album are played by session musicians. Again Atheist added new elements to their sound and again they produced a groundbreaking tech/ extreme prog metal album. Adding even more fusion elements but also latin inspired rythms to their style made "Elements" the extremely unique album it is. It´s not quite as aggressive in nature as the two preceeding albums but it´s the band´s most eclectic release and probably their most progressive too.

While there are no bonus features on the three LPs compared to the original CD releases there´s always the question of the more deep and warm sound on an LP compared to a CD, but much really has to do with the equipment you use IMO.

Having followed and been a dedicated fan of Atheist since the early nineties I´m to be honest very ecstatic about this box-set release. Even though this is very much a fan item, the music contained in the box-set and the idea behind the box-set are great and "Atheist - The Collection" fully deserves a 5 star rating.