Name – Internet Killed The Audio Star
Killer Whales, Man
My Sweetheart, The Whore
The Spark Of Divinity
Empathic Communicator, Part I: Homage To The Hunter (Unconscious Incompetence)
Empathic Communicator, Part II: Beebee (Conscious Incompetence)
Empathic Communicator, Part III: Your Sun Machine, Your Space Embracer (Conscious Comptence)
Empathic Communicator, Part IV: How To Murder The Earth (Unconscious Comptence)
Mare
The Sycophant, The Saint And The Gamefox
Dave Mustaine
Avaler l’Ocean
You’ll Never Die In This Town Again
Charmer
Review cliché number 28 gazillion: any review of any vaguely technical metal album will at some point mention jazz interludes. This is a cliché that gets trotted out as often as the joke (or more accurately, fact) about Sarah Jessica Parker looking like an anorexic horse. But for all you chin-stroking beret-wearing clove-cigarette-in-a-poncy-holder-smoking jazz cats, there is some proper jazz influence right here, in ‘My Sweetheart, The Whore’: a mazy fretless bass run that evokes the spirit of Jaco Pastorius. And it’s not the only highlight on a record that practically blinds you with them.
Paying as much heed to genres as England do to actually trying to win football matches in an exciting manner, Name are much in the ilk of From A Harlots Mouth, with a metal take on a hardcore sensibility, but they push the breakdowns into even more sludgy territory, and just as suddenly turn on a sixpence into something that wouldn’t be out of place on Mastodon record. The ‘Empathic Communicator’ suite showcases everything in the progressive metal genre that every right thinking metalhead should value in their music: power, intelligence and confidence. The forth part even has drone influences, for fuck’s sake.
And he’s the rub: such is the skill of this trio that it’s all completely seamless. No joke, you can’t spot a single weld line, just a single continuous vision, so when they shift grindcore to doom influences in ‘Mare’, and then onto jazz-blues on the following ‘The Sycophant, The Saint And The Gamefox’, you don’t notice, neither care. The only clichéd thing about this record you should be hearing is a “one of the album of the year” plaudit.
Reviewed by Steve Jones
‘Internet Killed The Audio Star’ is out now on Lifeforce
|
9
|
 |
CD Reviews 
