Collapsar -S/T
Since I basically get releases that Scott and Marty don’t want or don’t know what to do with, I ended up with this CD of progressive metalcore. Those two words separately are enough to turn me off to any release, so it’s good that I listened to the CD before I knew how it was classified. It would have been a real shame to offhandedly write this off as trendy, typical ‘today’-styled fake metal. It’s actually a good listen – intricate, intelligent, dense insanity. Each track is an instrumental opus dedicated to such esoteric concepts as robots, King Kong, and Godzilla. A good way to describe it is the perfect combination between high and low concept. On one hand, the music itself is so thick and technical and the instrumentation and musicianship so evolved that one would expect some pretentious lyrical meandering or the typical nonsensical gross-out fests offered by The Locust and their ilk. But no, the music is strong enough to stand on its own without confusing the concept with unnecessary words. On the low end, the tracks are named things like “Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla”, “King Kong Died for Your Sins”, and “Robot Wins”. Is it hipsters trying to be ironic? Probably, but at least they were gracious enough to spare me the hipster-prose. -Christine Lett
ESCAPE ARTIST
Worm Gear 