Altar of Plagues - Teethed Glory & Injury

One of my favorite compliments to pay a rock or metal band is to comment on their mastery of musical texture - those elements that reside in parallel to structure and motion, and create an immersive soundscape. The first band to awaken me to the concept and its possibilities were Neurosis, and they remain as good a touchstone as any. Yet, while no slight to Neurosis, quite often an emphasis on texture is found in bands whose success exists on a plane entirely distinct from the archetypical, riff-centric heavy metal paradigm.

Enter Altar of Plagues. The exquisite and fully integrated textures of Teethed Glory & Injury are vital to its success. But within the guitar riffs, the drums, the vocals lie the makings of a visceral and effective metal album in its own right. Whether delivered in a whisper or a snarl, the vocals convey a humanity occasionally absent in the bands who cohabit the cerebral corners of extreme metal. The guitar lines effortlessly glide between driving rhythmic passages and suspended melodic contours before descending into self-effacing swaths of feedback and sustain. Yet while each musician turns in a performance worthy of individual consideration, at no point during the album do these elements appear as anything other than vehicles for atmosphere, momentum, and compositional assertions.

The structure of the album is unique. With each song bleeding into the next, Teethed Glory & Injury is cohesive and monolithic. And its success demands such continuity, as the tracks themselves unfold as linear segments; propulsive in their development yet rarely retracing their steps. Nevertheless, each comes off as a pointed statement rather than a fragment.

The songs are willfully abstract, yet each evokes a distinct imagery. This tendency is brilliantly embodied by the visuals of the album (see the video for "God Alone", below). The synthesis of this music with interpretative dance is beautiful, and shockingly natural. On Teethed Glory & Injury, Altar of Plagues have brought into relief the impressionism of black metal.

An outstanding work on many levels.

I recommend the video in full screen.

The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer

Perhaps more than any other band, The Dillinger Escape Plan is responsible for the style of "mathcore" - a subgenre of heavy music which makes a virtue out of constructing the most convoluted rhythmic passages possible, and eviscerating any melodic theme which might attempt to emerge. Yet Dillinger has an instinct for something that many of their imitators fail to grasp - complete unpredictability lacks the capacity to surprise the listener. Where Dillinger distinguishes themselves is in their uncanny ability to set up an expectation, and then thwart it - sometimes in the coarse of mere seconds. You don't need to get past the first 10 minutes of One of Us is the Killer to have this experience time and time again, and the results can be mind boggling. It's exhilerating, and even if DEP's approach started and ended with this trick, it would be enough to have me coming back for each new album they release. Admittedly, this style of composition has a niche audience.

Within extreme metal and hardcore, DEP has few competitors from the standpoint of being a prototypical "musician's band" - Meshuggah being an obvious example. For me, contrasting the two groups gives insight into the divergence of the respective ethos of metal and hardcore. Meshuggah has spent a career cultivating an immersive and idiosyncratic musical landscape, and constrained their musical developments to the thorough exploration of its possibilities. To make the point more plainly, they've created a signature atmosphere. I would argue that this is one of the hallmarks of heavy metal (and often classical), as opposed to hardcore (and often jazz) - the attempt to make the listener forget that they are listening to a group of people playing instruments in a room.  Listening to DEP, the awareness of the band-as-musicians is never really absent. If I might naively borrow a theatrical concept that I know little about in order to frame my over-simplification: heavy metal leaves the fourth wall intact; hardcore never had one.

The upshot of that slightly abstruse excursion is that, stylistically, DEP seems content to throw anything and everything into the mix on their albums. This makes for a very interesting listen, but the impact of each song for a particular listener is likely to be something of a crapshoot. To take this discussion completely back to earth, when DEP aims for a mid-tempo track coupled with Greg Puciato's screaming/melodic hybrid vocals, I just don't think the results always sound particularly good.

Blah blah, here's a great track from One of Us is the Killer: