So what started out as a pretty typical metalcore band in the early 2000s slowly developed its own sound and hasn't hesitated to change directions or weave more kinds of influences into the music on the way to today's Guillotine. A notable element of post-metal can be heard from 2005 and onwards, with Daikini basically being half post-metal. The other half is quite "muscular" beatdown-ish sludgy metalcore and the two manage to compliment each other quite well, with metalcore and post-metal taking turns on the album basically (this sounds better in reality than on paper).
Apnea is a further continuation of the style found on Daikini, although slightly less post-metal comes into play, but with Dead Storm in 2009 there had been a marked change of direction. Along with everything sounding more rounded out and mature (basically the band had gotten better at its trade), it can definitely be heard that the band had, recently before writing the album, switched from drop B to drop A. It's quite obvious from listening to it that both the bassist and the guitarists enjoy chugging the newly found drop A note, which is at times more an adorable thought than it is good music, but overall it sounds quite good. The metalcore and the post-metal are still there, just better. The sound is better (and thicker), it's really deep and vast, both in the drop A sludginess, as well as in the more atmospheric and melodic parts. The sludge treads deeper into the abyss and the post-metal somehow captures some wide terrain or vastness, without sounding cliché or boring.
What followed in 2011 was yet another change in direction and the Ebola split with fellow Danes As We Fight is the most hardcore punk material The Psyke Project have released to date. They continued to use drop A but all the songs are quite fast-paced and aggressive with more hardcore punk style drumming, something that they had only hinted at in previous workings. The Psyke Project have always been aggressive but never really in that way, and for someone like me that enjoys few things more than the past-paced aggression of bands like Punch, Masakari and Trap Them, it's a definite recipe for success. Also to be heard on that album is more of the Celestine influence, most prominently in the breakdowns of songs such as "Battles", which again is a plus in my ears.
What is great about The Psyke Project is the constant evolution, development and experimentation. After Ebola the band again dropped their tuning, going from A to G, a tuning probably most notably used by Black Sheep Wall. My first impressions of Guillotine were littered by the thought of BSW, which I personally find rather boring. After more listens I don't quite hear the BSW influence that much anymore though. It is there but only to an extent (as can best be heard on "Partisan"), but I feel The Psyke Project will always be much more of a dynamic band than Black Sheep Wall. The Danes do exhibit the slow, crushing heaviness that BSW have mastered, but their song structures are more complicated, the riffs more varied and the pace is certainly pushed at times, with The Psyke Project notably showing their hardcore and metalcore roots. At times, Guillotine does sound like their second album, only heavier (check out "The End" for that), which can I guess both be counted as a pro and as a con. It would seem to be repetition, but then again there is definite development, and a lot of the Guillotine material you would never have heard on the first three albums released by The Psyke Project.
Overall, The Psyke Project's albums have for me, ironically, been consistently inconsistent, at least in the fact that I've never liked an entire album by them. However, individual songs from them have just been THAT good that I consistently come back to them and listen, and when they come to Iceland, I go to their shows, which are lively and energetic. The band is airtight and knows how to play a show. Whatever stories may circle about their partying habits and what not (I think you can definitely do more stupid things than to jump in the ice cold Atlantic ocean in the harbour of Neskaupstaður naked at 3 PM), their live shows are nothing but excellent (show review). You can tell how much the band enjoys playing live by the energetic stage performance and the smiles and giggles the band shows, without losing focus though. At the smaller shows in Iceland in the past, they've dabbled in back and forth dialogue with the crowd, and well, when a Danish band comes to Iceland, you can expect at least the metalheads to consistently shout random Danish words and phrases at the band, and the Psyke Project has taken it lightly and joined in by shouting back in their native language. At this year's Eistnaflug however, with probably a lower percentage of the audience knowing much about them than usual (and a lot more people present than usual), they just delivered their tight show with no nonsense. Not that I don't enjoy people shouting "flødeskum" randomly at the band, mind you. They had no speeches, didn't ask the crowd to do this and to do that and had no long pauses between songs (not something they've been known for, just something that a lot of bands could learn). Just straight out rocking, and some of their material certainly lends itself to rocking out, in every way possible.
Ultimately Guillotine is to me like all the other Psyke Project albums (save for their side of Ebola), in that I don't really enjoy it in its entirety that much, but individual songs are so good that I can't say that I don't enjoy the album. To me the standout tracks are the opener "Guillotine", "The Mute" and "Ghost Fight". The album's opener is probably the best track, and could be so on the strength of its opening riff alone. Holy shit. That is probably some of the heaviest, nastiest piece of music I've ever heard. Crushingly heavy and black metal-ish in its evilness, it really stands out, on what is otherwise a crushingly heavy and nasty album. If you can say anything about this album, it's that it certainly brings the extremities.
Those extremities can also be heard in "Ghost Fight", which with its pace is reminiscent of the previous release, Ebola. Perhaps breakdowns are a cliché, and the one in "Ghost Fight" isn't exactly complex, nor is it inventing the wheel, but damn it, it's good. "The Mute" then sees the band put on its best Neurosis impression, and with the eerie melody, tom drums and minimal cymbal work for most of the track they do a pretty good job of it. The song ultimately suffers from a lack of structure, but I can't stop listening to it, if only for the main riff, it's just that good. It's a great idea that probably could've been worked in a better way though, with more riffs thrown in around it perhaps.
The one thing that has been pretty consistent in The Psyke Project's sound is the post-rock element. On this album however, it's nowhere to be found, until the late track "When Man Became God", which first sounds very much like it could be off 2005's Daikini, yet could actually not in any way have been written for that album. This track is much better than similar tracks from that album, both purely in terms of songwriting, as well as doing well in skipping the "heavy part" that would make up the end of the equivalent tracks from Daikini. Also this is the only song on Guillotine accurately described as post-rock. Post-metal it is not. There is no heaviness, no distortion, no screamed vocals, and that's okay. The track is really good as it is, but it does come as quite a surprise. It's melody is on key (in a non-Jewish scale), it's instrumental, undistorted and without drums, and in every possible way quite the opposite from everything else on the album. No aggression, evilness, anger or rock 'n' roll. I can't really say a bad thing about this track in and of itself, but it does feel slightly out of place. It is however to be honest a good break, because the album is so extreme in many ways that it does not lend it self to continuous listening, not to me at least. In that way it's like The Secret's Agnus Dei, I can't really listen to the whole thing in one sitting, it's just that extreme and taxing on the ears, albeit in a good way.
The album closer sees the band do something it has if memory serves not done since Daikini, sing in Danish. "Menneske" (human being) is as far as I can tell also the only track in Danish they've released, along with Daikini's "Som Soldater" (like soldiers). Personally I'm always a fan of singing in the native tongue, and in my ears Danish works just fine for this sort of music. A lot of my fellow Icelanders probably won't agree, but that's only since Danish is mandatory in elementary school in Iceland.
This album has been getting really favourable reviews as far as I can tell, and that's very understandable, given the direction the band has been taking in the later years. The music is now much more acceptable to your average metalhead (it's not as "core" as previous work, as much as I hate that freak of a term) and well, frankly the sheer nastiness and evilness of parts of this album is admirable. This album is notably for me the first of its kind really, that I hear. I have yet to hear an album directly comparable to this one, although Celestine's first, At the borders of Arcadia, certainly does spring to mind, to an extent. What we have here though is something quite unique and The Psyke Project have made yet another sound world of their own, which is to something that puts them far ahead of the pack. But yet again (unfortunately), some of the songs are in my ears just a swing and a miss, with simply unimpressive to boring riffs at times. However (and pardon the language) the good songs are just really fucking good, as always. [Bloated Veins / Black Lake / Braincrushing / Swarm Of Nails]
- Kristján Friðbjörn
Free Guillotine download here. Vinyl release out via the labels in brackets (above).
To know about Halifax Collect updates as they come, follow us on facebook, twitter and tumblr. Thank you. Join the conversation by writing a comment below.
Related stories
EISTNAFLUG 2013: My experience
No comments:
Post a Comment