Angry Metal Guy

Leprous // Bilateral
Rating: 4.5/5.0 — Triumphantly Groovy
Label: InsideOut
Websites: myspace.com/leprousband | facebook.com/leprousband
Release Dates: EU: 22.08.2011 | US: 08.23.2011

Progressive music is a vast category filled with all sorts of various constellations of bands from Dream Theater to Symphony X to Rush to Opeth to Death to Pink Floyd to Pain of Salvation to Coheed & Cambria (arguably) and so forth. It can be very difficult to keep all that shit in order and, frankly, to find good progressive bands because it’s such a huge category. Despite the fact that progressive music should be the biggest, best and most original music in the world it suffers from some serious problems. The first is a tendency towards living in the past (för svenskar: bakåtsträvande) and the second is unoriginality, oddly enough. So finding a progressive band that is excellent, modern and original is still a hard thing to do. But you’ll never guess who has some angry (but good) news! Continue reading

Thomas Giles // Pulse
Rating: 4.5/5.0 — Super great!
Label: Metal Blade
Websites: myspace.com/thomasgilesmusic
Release Dates: EU: 28.01.2011 | US: 02.01.2011

Oh man, the Internetz are abuzz with love for this record already. Apparently everyone and their dog who runs a review website got this album 3 months ago and has been subsequently shitting themselves over the awesome!!!1! that is Thomas Giles‘ Pulse. A bit of background information as to why that might be. Yeah, because this is the vocalist from Between the Buried and Me. Yup. That’s it. I want to state with all certainty that if this were an independent record put out by a dude actually named Thomas Giles who wasn’t in a band that was well-respected even though being associated with a scene that everyone hates, this record would not be listened to by metal guys or reviewed on a metal website. Because this record is not metal. It contains minor bits o’ metal, but it for the large part a progressive-indie-electronica record. So be forewarned. Continue reading

The Dillinger Escape Plan // Option Paralysis
Rating: 4.0/5.0 — Gripping
Label: Seasons of Mist / Party Smasher
Websites: myspace.com/DillingerEscapePlan
Release Dates: EU: 22.03.2010 | US: 03.23.2010

The Dillinger Escape Plan‘s fourth record, Option Paralysis, has been one of the most anticipated records of this year so far. And for good reason, people are really taken by this band and their unique style. DEP has released some seriously wacky, sporadic records in the past that are both crazy and challenging and yet so very enticing and addictive—even teaming up with Mike Patton (and others) on an EP called Irony Is a Dead Scene. They’re a very hard band to stick into a genre, bordering on technical metal and hardcore as well as pulling in influences from industrial, jazz, acoustic rock and well, you name it, they can do it. That makes them feel very fresh—but can they maintain that freshness on Option Paralysis?

I could probably sum the review up in one word which answers the aforementioned question: yes. Option Paralysis, while not a terrible stretch from Ire Works, is still remarkably fun, layered and interesting to listen to. The band is able to keep themselves firmly straddling that border between experimental, progressive and sporadic and great poppy sensibility. While some have remarked that they want more blast and scream, from these guys, this Angry Metal Guy thinks it’s damn fresh to hear a band that is able to work clean parts, jazz piano solos and surf guitar tone onto an album without once coming off as feeling forced or even pretentious.

Instead, every track is a sonic adventure of beautifully structured and smartly written parts that blend with seemingly little effort. Vocalist Greg Puciato is definitely part of the reason for this, with a voice that can easily be described as “malleable.” There are very few vocalist I’ve heard like him who have the ability to take on a variety of vocal tones and ranges so that one could actually get the impression that there are different individuals singing different tracks throughout this album. Ranging between Patton and Claudio Sanchez (from Coheed & Cambria—which despite the band being lame, is not an insult), Puciato is remarkable. While being more of a death metal than hardcore kind of guy, I would prefer that he was a bit more guttural in his growls and less hardcore, one cannot deny that the sound works.

Of course, Puciato is far from the only member of this band and they all perform admirably. The music ranges between technical and ridiculous, to simplistic and heavy and even into the  more acoustic, as stated earlier, and everything is convincingly done and cohesive. This is one of those records that’s hard to choose standout tracks from, but “Gold Teeth on a Bum” is one of my favorites for its unique vocal performance and the big build at the end. “Widower”, filled with jazz piano and almost late NIN feel, is another fantastic track that I kept coming back to repeatedly. And, while every track on the second half of this album is great, “Chinese Whispers” stands out for its very cool rhythmic approach and a totally ridiculously intense vocal delivery.

The biggest issue with this record is that there are a few throwaway “aggressive” tracks that feel a little less cohesive with the whole, when the band has proven to be so effective at building tracks into perfectly executed chaos. There appears to be more energy for the big, epic and clean parts than there really is for the “mathcore” segments that the band has become so famous for. Both “Crystal Morning” and “Endless Endings” feel like filler and that’s a bit of a bummer, but as a smaller part of a very impressive whole, that is hardly an issue because DEP has once again managed to produce a gripping, brilliant album. Look for this record to be littering year-end top 10 lists. And check it out for yourself.

Three – Revisions
Rating: 3.5/5.0 – Very good
Label: Metal Blade (EU | USA)
Websites: theband3.com | myspace.com/officialbandthree
Release Dates: EU: 23.10.2009 | USA: 10.27.2009

Progressive rock and metal have been looking for a new band to update the genre with something new and original for a long time.  While the progressive metal sub-genre has expanded outward, it seems like progressive rock has been left to whiny emo kids and their pretentious and totally incomprehensible space odysseys.  Though in recent times bands like The Dear Hunter have started to appear, they tend to be far more eclectic, and rock oriented than I think many fans of progressive guitar rock are really looking for.  So when Three burst onto the scene a few years back and was, really, the first band to do something new and interesting with progressive rock since the mid-90s, they began getting some well-deserved attention.

My first contact with this band was 2007′s opus The End is Begun, which I was summarily blown away by.  The record was a re-envisioning of progressive rock like the scene hadn’t seen in a very long time.  The writing was tight, catchy and it popped with energy.  The unique use of backing acoustics and the tremendously crisp and beautiful voice of the band’s leading man Joey Eppard excited me like few other bands have.  So I was, of course, very excited to get my hands on the new album.

This initial excitement gave way to a bit of disappointment when I read the band’s promo bit, which was describing Revisions as a chance to re-work old material and re-record it and not really new material at all.  The record itself was also supposed to be far more leaning towards the singer/songwriter side of the band and not really the more progressive side—I admit, I was worried.

Of course, I shouldn’t have doubted.  Three has been an excellent band longer than I have been a fan of them, obviously (having formed in 1993) and this album is filled with great tracks.  However, the sales pitch of “singer/songwriter” is definitely not misleading in any way, shape or form.  This record is filled with tight, pop-laden tracks with soaring vocals, beautiful melodies and a tenderness that permeates every crevice of the recordings.  The technical aspects definitely take a back seat to much more linear songs with big choruses and even Eppard’s slap-blend guitar playing is much less common, which makes some of these songs feel like they’re lacking an important technical aspect.

That said, this is a band that is tight as hell and really solid song-writers, so it should make sense that their B Sides record (or, well, castaways record) is filled with excellent tracks despite being songs that never really got attention the first time around. While there are tracks on here that I don’t like at all (or am not terribly fond of) such as “Anyone Human” and “Halloween,” tracks like “The Emerald Undertow” and “Lexicon of Extremism” (which is easily the most technical song on the album)  and “Automobile” (the most straight-forward poppy track, in my opinion) still make it great to listen to.

I don’t normally talk about production unless I think it’s bad for some reason, because frankly good production is pretty much a standard when you’re dealing with major bands on labels like Metal Blade or Nuclear Blast.  But this record is especially well-produced and worth listening to for its amazing balance, well-used tricks and cleanness.  It still sounds very full even though it’s so clean and it’s really fun to listen to because of that.

If you’re a fan of the band or a fan of bands like The Dear Hunter or Coheed and Cambria you’ll probably love this record (and their other stuff, too).  And if you’re a fan of Porcupine Tree, Opeth, old Pink Floyd or even progressive rock bands like Dream Theater, you’ll probably enjoy these guys.  Should you start with Revisions?  Probably not, I’d tell you to go back and check out their previous record, but this one is pretty good, too.