I lied in the last post about Atheist completeing the holy trinity of jazz death metal, I forgot I hadn't posted this guy. Here we have another completely different approach to melding jazz and extreme metal, out of the three albums posted here this would definitely be the most jazzy. Probably the first thing you will notice when you start listening are the weird robot vocoder vocals, it took me a while to get used to but now I appreciate their place in the music.
Composition is the name of the game here, very deep and complex song structures with great melodic balance and use of dynamics. Veil of maya tipifies this with a syncopated guitar/bass/drums assault leading into a new agey breakdown and coming out the other side with sick riffage before sinking into a yazz chord laden guitar solo. Instrumental textures is pretty much a pure jazz fusion song and displays a fantastic array of musical textures from pretty flourishes to jazzical technophobic bass solos. The interplay of guitar wizard Paul Masvidal and drum wizard Sean Reinert is pretty special, an interesting factoid is that Paul and Sean actually played on Death's Human album, but you wouldn't know it from this.
One of the things that I like about this album is the thematic content of spirituality and philosophy, a bit hippie wank is a refreshing change from the "you are dead, you got sodomised, I fucking killed you" of most death metal (not that I dislike that kinda stuff - obviously). Although all that said they did end up going just a bit too far down the spirituality path after recording focus and recruited a female singer, turned totally new age and recorded a demo under the name 'Portal'. A few of the best portal songs are included on this remaster and I actually really like them, the portal demo as a whole is pretty unlistenable though.
This guy is one of the most original metal albums around, definitely worth investigation. I should note that I have a pretty bad fever at the moment so a lot of what I just typed is probably a bit loopy, that's not a disclaimer though - just a fun fact.
Track Listings
1. Veil of Maya (5:23)
2. Celestial Voyage (3:40)
3. The Eagle Nature (3:30)
4. Sentiment (4:23)
5. I'm But a Wave to... (5:30)
6. Uroboric Forms (3:32)
7. Textures (4:42)
8. How Could I (5:29)
Total Time: 36:15
Download here: (Cynic - Focus, variable bit rate ~220kbps)
2 comments:
This is my favourite album of all time. What a journey, and that final solo leaves me breathless every time.
Have you heard 'Traced in Air' yet?
Well, anyway, thanks for 'Unquestionable Presence'. I'm ashamed to admit it, but Atheist is a band I've been neglecting for a while now. So, I might as well give them a listen now and find out what all the hubbub is about!
So, thank you for posting this masterpiece at VBR HQ. Link is running fine!!!.
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