The Dø - A Mouthful

Getting my vidya game on, I've recently been playing Saints Row: The Third. Decided to check out some of the bands on the in game radio, and since I'm now on a self-proclaimed quest to find female vocalists who aren't annoying like the banshees in your favorite symphonic metal bands, I decided to check out The Dø, a French-Finnish indie/folk pop hybrid. Their debut A Mouthful is pretty interesting if solely for the fact it's so eclectic.

You can hear it all on A Mouthful. Jazz, indie rock, hip hop, folk, pop, whatever. It's all on here with Olivia Merilahti's odd but sweet sounding voice. I read some quotes from reviews and critics compared her voice to Bjork's and Eminem's. How the fuck does that make any sense? Well you have tracks like "Searching Gold" and perhaps "On My Shoulders" which I could see having the Bjork aesthetic, but the latter reference is much less audible except on "Queen Dot Kong," the track that made me go out and get this album. Here Merilahti essentially raps while accompanied by brass. It's refreshing, different, and interesting to hear. Something you can't say for most pop music these days.

The more standard tracks like reggae-influenced "At Last," "On My Shoulders," and the bouncy "Tammie" are all great as well. The folk break "Unisassi Laulelet" is decent if just for the break it provides in the middle of A Mouthful. There are some more predictable tracks like the girl-rock "Stay (Just a Little Bit More)" and the melancholic "Song For Lovers" which are a bit of a letdown, but overall the album is pretty enjoyable. Both Merilahti and Dan Levy utilize a plethora of instruments and the production accentuates each very well. Although it's not the most deep listen in the world, A Mouthful is definitely worth a try. There's bound to be something that you can enjoy on an album as eclectic as this.

7.75 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1. Playground Hustle
2. At Last
3. On My Shoulders
4. Song For Lovers
5. The Bridge Is Broken
6. Stay (Just a Little Bit More)
7. Unisassi Laulelet
8. Tammie
9. Queen Dot Kong
10. Coda
11. Searching Gold
12. When was I Last Home
13. Travel Light
14. Aha
15. In My Box

Virus - The Agent That Shapes The Desert

For the last thirty-one days of the year I'm planning to do a review on a 2011 album every day. It'll get me in the writing mood and serve as a break from studying for finals.

 

Tritones out the ass. That's what Norway's Virus' The Agent That Shapes The Desert sounds like. This agent is rhythmically jazzy and dissonant, with a pinch of metal. Although pretty much avant-garde rock, Virus has made quite the name for themselves in the metal scene as well. In this way they're kind of like Porcupine Tree after they assimilated a bunch of pretentious metalheads into their fanbase.

Except Virus is significantly better than slightly above-average progressive rock.

The Agent That Shapes The Desert is a very cohesive album. The instruments are all extremely bright, noticeable, and really pull you in. There's a degree of production here that's unprecedented in this kind of music, and it captures the atmosphere that the music is trying to convey perfectly, making it extremely memorable. Songs like "Chromium Sun" open with a galloping (no not triplets) bassline and keep the tritones and major-sevenths flowing. Others like "Continental Drift" manage this speed over slower chord progressions, creating a slow-moving, geologic feel to the music. The deep bassy distortion at the beginning of the latent track "Dead Cities Of Syria" is addicting and droning, and the song builds nicely on that strong foundation. All the songs are very well-crafted, and it really conveys the precambrian-mesopotamian theme of the album well.

Much to my dismay they had to ruin the fun and add in some of the more boring vocals I've heard this year to each and every track. They almost have an operatic-symphonic quality to them similar to other progressive rock or metal bands, and I always tend to find this style hit or miss. Sure sometimes it's fitting and you can hear the lyrics clearly, but the sheer enunciation of the vocals really kills the atmosphere. Had this been an instrumental avant-garde or even math rock album it probably would've been a bit more tolerable. There are some instances where I feel they work really well though - "Parched Rapids" comes to mind first. The song's innate dissonance and the good use of rests resonates with Czarl's off-kelter vocal approach.

If you're looking for well-written avant-garde rock with several degrees of jazz, metal, and progressive music in its sound, I wouldn't put it past The Agent That Shapes The Desert for it to be exactly what you're looking for.

7.5 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	The Agent That Shapes The Desert
2.	Continental Drift
3.	Chromium Sun
4.	Red Desert Sand
5.	Intermission: Furnace Creek
6.	Dead Cities Of Syria
7.	Where The Flame Resides
8.	Parched Rapids
9.	Call Of The Tuskers

Flourishing - The Sum Of All Fossils

During this past month I've been spinning Flourishing's The Sum Of All Fossils. It's easily one of the less mentioned bands in this year's teeming pool of death metal debuts, but The Sum Of All Fossils easily deserves so much more talk.

This year has seen a lot of death metal debuts and releases by established artists, but Flourishing tops nearly all of them with their convoluting passages. As I mentioned, Flourishing is a death metal band. Their style could be described as experimental, but that would be comparing them to some of metal's lowest common denominators (Unexpect I'm looking at you). Here you have something much more special and worthy of being considered as such.

Flourishing's experimental, nearly progressive brand of death metal is comparable to fantastic acts such as Gorgut's and Vengeful's, but with it's own unique flare. The music is densely layered and composed of winding passages that are not afraid to abruptly change key in the middle of a track. This makes for a fully engaging listen and one that you can spin time and time again and still find new nuances. There's also a crushing, tectonic rhythm provided by the mid-paced but powerful drumming and the deep, organic basslines. It has what is also easily one of the most rich productions and one of the best mixing jobs of the last year.

The Sum Of All Fossils begins with one of the faster tracks on the album "A Thimble's Worth." The pacing isn't breakneck ala Origin or Gigan (on certain tracks), but is more midpaced for technical death, and it works so much better. Tracks like "In Vivid Monochrome" and "Momentary Senses" are bound to be technical death classics, with their interesting structures and key switching. That's another one of the highlights of Flourishing's well-composed music: they often play major as well as minor scales, which is always fun to hear in death metal when done with the traditional sense of relentless aggression. This brings out a lighter side of the band that's reminiscent of Anata's more progressive tracks. The lyrics are generally positive to fit with the brighter scales, and they also have a lot of introspective qualities similar to Gorguts and Ulcerate. However those qualities get kind of awkward on "By Which We're Cemented," where there's an odd clean vocal section. That one part is not enough to ruin the song though, and the rest of the song and album grinds along like continental plate on mantle. There's another one of these sections on "Momentary Senses," but it's fleeting and laced with effects, making it at least bearable. The rest of the song is a writhing primordial monstrosity and that major scale brightness I mentioned earlier shows itself with just over minute left in the track. There's actually an interesting, grind-esque rhythm on "Summary," and the closer is a fittingly dissonant conclusion to one of the best albums released in 2011. Definitely check this one out.

9.5 out of 10


Tracklisting:

1.	A Thimble’s Worth
2.	The Prospects of Rejection
3.	By Which We’re Cemented
4.	In Vivid Monochrome
5.	Momentary Senses
6.	Fossil Record
7.	Summary
8.	As if I Bathed in Excellence