Unexpect - In a Flesh Aquarium (2006)

Yes, I know there's a newer album - yes, I know it is just as good, if not better.  I'm getting there.  But we gotta start here, because this is where I met Unexpect.

Do you know who Unexpect is?  They're weird.  If Gojira was progressive, then Unexpect is, well...post-progressive?  Regressive?  All I know is they're fucking weird, and that's the way we like them.

Unexpect: taking dark cabaret back from the
socially awkward goths since 1996

Hailing from the almighty technical extreme metal wonderland,  the great Canada, where the viciousness of the winters is rivaled only by the ferocity of their kindhearted acceptance of all people and genial nature, Unexpect is anything but your average extreme metal band.  Case and point: their bass player, who goes by ChaotH, plays a fucking NINE string bass.

That neck is as thick as his...Canadian accent.
What were you thinking?

In a Flesh Aquarium, their first full length studio album that wasn't self-released, is an exploration of how many non-cohesive elements can be crammed into a single album of chaos.  Slap bass, violin, operatic female vocals, clarinet, electronic noise - it's hard to find something that the band doesn't use.  And I know what you're thinking: "That sounds like they're just copying [insert orchestral power metal band here]."  NO.  Nightwish can't do this shit.  This isn't power metal.  This is circusy, evil, confusing genius.

The album starts with "Chromatic Chimera" (no, not THAT Chimaira), which honestly is a beautiful piano piece.  The melody is consistent and accessible until it hits a weird, out of place chromatic walk down (go figure) at 0:27, and then all hell breaks loose at 0:55 (that's where they lose power metal kids).  Then, at 1:05, the circus shows up.  It's weird at first, and takes a little to get used to, especially for people looking for something brutal, but you can't listen to Unexpect without a healthy dose of self-awareness and satire.  They KNOW they're ridiculous.

The best part is, if you stick with the album, you hear some pretty phenomenal musicians do some incredible things.  "Chromatic Chimera" sports a pleasant use of musical saw and constant, beautiful piano work, and "Desert Urbania" has one of my favorite guitar solos of all time starting at 5:44 - I can't even imagine the theory at work in the note choice for every one of his damn sweeps.  "Silence 01101071" acts as a filler track, but actually adds a totally different realm to the album, using electronic drums and dissonante violin to make you feel like your computer is gonna fuck you up.  And then, the climax of the album in all its weirdness: "Psychic Jugglers" begins with an epic string intro that makes every power metal band shit itself.  Seriously, we're talking marimba, strings, timpani, synth, death growls, chaotic shouting...honestly, when the intro ends at 0:55 you feel like you may have been possessed.

Self-portrait after the first
0:55 of "Psychic Jugglers"

So check it out.  A review of their newest album is coming, cause it's great too.  Unexpect deserves the title avant-garde, and you'll find that out.  I think their sound was best described by a friend of mine's mother: she complained that the sounded like hundreds of demons dancing around a fire.  You'll see.

Gojira - Terra Incognita (2001)

I'm making a habit of reviewing old albums, apparently.  So the review is 11 years late - well this album has been fucking brilliant for eleven years then.

If you haven't heard of Gojira, then let me let you in on a bit about them: Gojira is a French progressive death metal band whose themes center around environmentalism and saving the goddamn whales.  They're very heavily involved with Sea Shepherd, an organization founded to save the whales, and formerly had a ship named after them.  Now, I know what you're probably thinking - that doesn't sound br00tal at all.  Well you're wrong.  Very wrong.

Is that Vin Diesel?

Terra Incognita is HEAVY.  There's really no other word to describe it.  They don't have that chaotic, thrash-derived fury you hear in standard, run of the mill death metal, but they aren't slowing down too much to be considered a doom metal band either.  The group is distinctively death metal...but definitely progressive.  The guitars chug with the weight of a thousand bricks slamming incessantly into your face, and their screams vary from a guttural growl to that ripping, almost black metal scream.  They even throw some "clean" (albeit distressed) vocals in there for good measure.

But, honestly, the heaviness isn't what makes Gojira one of those bands that causes metalheads within a 10 mile radius to spontaneously start headbanging.  No, it's the cleanliness of the album and the song structure.  Case and point, take my favorite track from the album, and my favorite Gojira track of all time: "Lizard Skin."  Hear those guitar gallops at 1:20?  The kick isn't echoing those.  The drummer is running 16ths beneath the sixtuplet gallop rhythm of the lead and rhythm, which means in order for that rhythm not to get lost entirely, it needs to be clean as FUCK.  This is a testament to the guitarists' skill and sound choice, as their distortion is scooped enough to keep the chug and rip of the highs without sounding like a bad pop metalcore band.  But seriously.  Listen to any song, and what you'll hear is notes, all in the right fucking place.  Things aren't out of time, and if they are, like the tremolo line from "Blow Me Away (Niverse)," it's still not out of time - it's like that on purpose.

Woah, my bad Venetian Snares...just
put the baseball bat down...

The song structure of Terra Incognita is something to be amazed at as well.  They use pretty damn simple riffs.  If you're a competent guitarist with some decent tremolo chops, you can play every song on the album, but as you play each part by itself, you realize that every instrument needs the others to sound amazing.  Alone?  Annoying, simple, boring lines.  Together?  Masterpiece.  That's musicianship and songwriting, not some guy in his basement with a drum machine.

To top it off, Terra Incognita has something else going for it that us metalheads aren't used to: a terrifying, eerie message.  I'm not an environmentalist, but I can't help but wonder what Gojira is all worked up about when I listen to tracks like "1990 Quatrillions De Tonnes;" it's like something out of a nightmare, pretty, dark, clean electric lines with screams of dozens of people, apparently in pain as vocals.  Seriously, it's more terrifying than the most brutal Dying Fetus album I've heard.  If this is what dying whales sound like, I'm never eating another delicious, juicy whale steak ever again.

Farewell, my juicy, delicious
whale steak

Overall?  Check it out if you like prog.  Check it out if you like heavy shit.  But don't check it out if you're looking for the next Cryptopsy, cause you'll be disappointed - Terra Incognita is a patient album of tracks that take time to develop and carry something more than the instant gratification of blast beats and sweep-picked diminished chords.


And in case you want to know what I'm talking about, "1990 Quatrillions De Tonnes" will fuck you up here.

Fleshgod Apocalypse - Agony (2011)

So, all the metalheads came from somewhere; we all had a gateway band that acted as our proverbial serpent of Eden.  For me, that band was Nightwish, and as a result, I've seemed to tend towards music that incorporates orchestral elements.  But lets be honest.  Nightwish might technically be metal, but power metal is too corny to be brutal, and once you go brutal, there's not really any going back.  Don't get me wrong, I love some good battle metal, as long as it draws on the Icelandic and Nordic traditions of battle, not that bullshit French chivalric tradition.

But that's why there are albums like Italian technical death metal band Fleshgod Apocalypse's 2011 masterpiece, Agony.  I never, and I mean never, thought that something using orchestral instrumentation could be so fucking brutal.  Now, for the Nightwish fans out there, don't go into this album expecting nine minute concertos or oboe and bassoon duets ("Ghost Love Score" anyone?).  The genius of Agony isn't the complexity of the orchestral arrangement, but the perfect fusion that the score has with the traditional metal instrumentation.  Throughout (almost) every track, between Paoli's neckbreaking blasts  and Trionfera's facemelting solos, there is a present orchestral line woven into the musical infrastructure.

Metal album or tentacle porn?
You decide!

Speaking of neckbreaking blasts and facemelting solos, lets just take a minute to recognize these musicians for their feats of creativity, and in Paoli's case, endurance.  Watch a video of the man: those snare strokes are all Moellar technique, no flappy fingers or garage black metal unintentional decrescendo blasts - the fucker could probably blast on pillows.  Or Travis Barker's face.  Actually I wouldn't mind seeing a video of that.  

The guitar solos of Agony echo the dichotomy that the rest of the album strives for: melody with brutality. Whether it's the scale grinding in "The Violation," the sweeps of "The Hypocrisy," or the brilliant tap riff from my favorite track, "The Deceit," the melodic element clearly is favored in lieu of atonal tritonic arpeggios up and down the fretboard.  Although, given the technicality of the album, I have no doubt that they could do either.

In an expression of what I can only imagine is the band deciding to tell the world "fuck yeah we're that awesome," the album concludes with the title track "Agony," following in the tradition of their previous album Mafia.  "Agony" is a solo piano piece whose dark intensity mirrors that of the rest of the album with a decidedly Rachmaninoffian taste.  The brilliance of this last piece is the manner in which it captures the tone of the whole album in such an accessible medium - seriously, show this song to your grandma, and she'll probably ask you for the song (if she knows what a CD is).  


Agony isn't perfect; the seamless transition between tracks, while exceptionally badass between "The Deceit" and "The Violation," tends to run the songs together, making the album seem more like one really long, brutal eargasm.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when you want to show your friend that sick guitar solo and you've been through every song on the album twice already, it can get old.  Rossi's high pitched waily bits can be a little trying at first as well, but I found that after some time, I grew to enjoy them.  


Now, if you're not sold on the album yet, here's the kicker: Fleshgod Apocalypse can do this shit LIVE too.  I had the opportunity to see them open for Decapitated at the Fox Theatre in Hollywood, and I don't know what I expected, but it sure as fuck wasn't five Italian motherfuckers in black shredded tuxedos and corpse paint chugging Jack Daniels like clergymen.  Even though the orchestration was all done through recording and synths, the performance was musically tight and, as far as I could tell, flawless - though my observational skills were somewhat hindered by furious headbanging.  Oh well, what can you do?