BRAIN TENTACLES — Brain Tentacles (review)

BRAIN TENTACLES — Brain Tentacles album cover Album · 2016 · Avant-garde Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
adg211288
Metal bands that decide to throw out one of the genre's most dominant instruments aren't unheard of, but they're not exactly common either. In the case of US act Brain Tentacles they've done away with the guitar and replaced it with a saxophone. The group describe their music as a mix of metal, jazz and noise and that's pretty accurate about what you'll find on this, their self-titled debut album.

Due to lacking guitars (though it does have bass and plenty of it), it came as a surprise to me how metal this actually sounds. I guess I shouldn't been, as there are other acts out there that I'm familiar with that have likewise emulated the usual setup metal in their own unique way, such as Apocalyptica on their cello's on Van Canto with their very voices. Brain Tentacles have only subbed the one instrument here, but it turns out that was all they needed to make their sound the most interesting out of all the such bands I've heard. That may because unlike those other two artists, these guys actually play experimental music as well, rather than essentially producing generic work in a non-standard way. Brain Tentacles is an avant-garde jazz metal album, to my ears, and you don't hear those every day, guitars or no guitars. It's a wonder that jazz metal hasn't become a major thing yet, as artists have been experimenting mixing the two for countless years.

The album is mostly instrumental with occasional vocal parts. I'm not personally a fan of pure instrumental music for the most part, but I actually wish this album was as I feel the vocal parts are the weak link in the band's sound, though they do add some shades of extreme metal that make me think mostly of sludge metal, or even hardcore punk music. The music is good throughout, but once the wow factor has had time to wear off, which for me happened about half way through the album, I didn't find it to be as spectacular as I initially thought it was going to be. The opening duo of Kingda Ka and Fruitcake hit me hard but with such short durations don't make up even a tenth of the album's running time. The album also ends with an extended voice-over section which seems to be the band's attempt at a comedy skit, but it goes on for far too long to be funny.

Brain Tentacles produced an interesting album here. They aren't the first band to try to do something like this as there was also a band called Zu who made some releases considered to be avant-garde metal using a saxophone instead of a guitar, but it's still pretty unique and will certainly broaden your horizons about how metal can be made. For my part it's something I'll probably return to on those rare occasions when my usual go to genres just aren't the cup of tea I need, rather than be something on regular rotation.
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