siLLy puPPy There are some pretty bleak places in the world. Places so bleak i can’t even begin to imagine how horrible it must be to grow up there. The city of Norilsk, Russia has to be one such location situated above the Arctic Circle and the center of the largest known nickel / copper / palladium mining scene in the entire world. Combined with incessant frigid cold, darkness and air pollution i would imagine that young Russians growing up there would either turn to drugs and alcohol to cope or to take the different route of escapism through an art form. The quartet of Anton (guitar), Vlad (bass), Vova (drums) and Sasha (vocal) chose the latter path when they formed the sludge punk / mathcore band EQUAL MINDS THEORY in 2005.

Having had enough of the remote frigid lands of the midnight sun, EQUAL MINDS THEORY wisely relocated in the city of Moscow where it has become one of Russia’s leading noisemakers in the vein of other mathcore monsters like The Dillinger Escape Plan, Psyopus, Converge and early Car Bomb. So far this band has released a few EPs but only this eponymously titled 2011 release counts as a bonafide full-length with a running time of 37 minutes exactly. This band is all about pent up energy release with caustic explosive delivers of grindcore, hardcore punk and mathcore bombastically erupting like a failed nuclear bomb factory having a Hiroshima styled meltdown.

The beauty of EQUAL MINDS THEORY though is that despite the unrelenting rage through sound, the band is no one-trick pony delivering a monotonous one-dimensional presentation of angsty youth dressed up in techy nerdiness. This album of eleven tracks features a nice variety of stylistic shifts, varying tempos and dynamics that include glacially slow melodic guitar licks that feature electronic atmospheres and unexpected breaks. The band engages in the tried and true dissonance effect where the guitars are out of tune and a creepy atonality creates a darkened atmospheric presence much like the endless Arctic Russian winters of the band’s origin.

“Bad Moon” for example is a slow atmospheric murkiness like a frigid Arctic river trickling through ice floes however “The Flood” showcases the band at its most bombastic with frenetic dissonant guitar attacks at quickened tempos and rhythmically complex time signature brutality. Sasha delivers the usual core metal style of vocals with growly screams at top decibalage while the triumvirate guitar / bass / drum action of the Anton / Vlad / Vova provides a pummeling blitzkrieg attack of mathcore achieving its utmost ferocity. While this would surely become stale if overdone, the band has grasped the need for diversity which is provided in abundance.

Elements of sludge metal ( a nice core hybridizing style of metal) provide the basis for the slower oft doomy processions. The album, like most of the mathcore ilk, provides short but condensed bursts of energetic orotundity but the closing track “The Icebreaker” deviates from the rest of the album by cranking out a sluggish 14 minute behemoth which serves as a creepy atmospheric comedown from the monstrous attacks that precede (although it’s intense in a sludge metal way). All in all, Norilsk should be proud as it spawned a captivating energetic breed of youth determined to chisel its way through the permafrost and into the throes of the modern dark recesses of one of extreme metal’s most exclusive enclaves of extremity. As far as mathcore albums go, this one is excellent in how it juxtaposes many elements together to craft a compelling album’s worth of material.