What's He Building In There? 2007

"I really enjoyed listening to this fine piece of music ... thanks to the band for providing me with some samples for evaluation just prior to the album release (May 6th)!

Now on to the review: The album is a weird/technical/math extreme metal type of thing, vaguely reminding me of bands like PsyOpus and Behold... the Arctopus. Vocal styles are extremely diverse, ranging from growling through screaming to clean vocals which alternate between "typical" metal and borderline emocore. The music itself is quite technical, and although there are occasional soft/peaceful parts it can be a bit daunting to digest the whole album in one setting. The lyrics have an interesting concept: Instead of the usual verse/chorus concept they're more like stories with virtually no repetition/rhyming.

I'm giving the album 4 stars - musicianship is top notch, it's all very consistent and even with all the density and "mayhem" there are always (brief) moments of relative silence or simple riffs before then next onslaught. Personally I would have preferred some longer calm passages or whole songs (like the last track Avian Taxi) to provide more contrast and dynamics.

P.S.: I almost forgot one of the most important aspects of the band: humour. Well, humour combined with somewhat excessive violence - you can check out the band's homepage to see what I mean ... start with their hilarious biography/history."