At first glance, it may seem like jazz and rock music are on two completely different sides of the spectrum. But if you look a little closer, artists have been combining American’s two greatest exports for quite a long time. In the ‘70s, fusion music, which combined jazz and rock elements, quickly became the most popular form of jazz music of the decade. Spearheaded by Miles Davis’ 1970 blockbuster, Bitches Brew, musicians found out that by adding electric guitars and synthesizers to their compositions, the sound they were making would appeal to the rock saturated mainstream.
Combining jazz and metal was only a natural succession from that point. Considering the progressive nature of many of the scene’s most renowned metal groups, adding more overtly jazz elements was bound to happen sooner or later. In the ‘80s, Florida based bands Atheist and Cynic helped properly develop the style and now days bands like Opeth border the line between progressive and jazz-metal. In Washington DC, the metal band Reflux relies less on jazz sensibilities and more on the skillful abuse that guitarist Tosin Abasi duels out on his guitar each time he picks it up. Animals as Leaders is Abasi’s side project, an instrumental metal event that combines the progressive elements that he’s made his bread and butter with as a member of Reflux and the interesting jazz elements that I’ve been talking about. The band’s new self titled album is a provocative journey through subdued jams and head banging shredders. And though the album fails to deliver the goods all the time, it’s a rewarding listen and a great platform for Abasi to show exactly what he’s capable of as one of the great guitarists that not enough people know about.
Not being a big metal head myself, a typical metal album is usually more miss than hit with me and those that I do enjoy usually take a bit of easing into. With Animals as Leaders’ debut disc though, I found myself taking to the sound quite quickly. From the epic album opener “Tempting Time” to the more ambient “Soraya,” the sound seemed both original and captivating. Abasi is stellar throughout the disc and never fails to impress with his fantastic technical prowess, but being skilled at an instrument can only get you so far. The much more impressive part of the album is the songwriting and the song layout of the album itself which ebbs and flows with the best of them. A few shorter songs such as “Tessitura” and “Modern Meat” are wrapped around the more expansive compositions nicely, especially the classical guitar sounds of “Modern Meat” which is not only an enchanting album highlight by itself but serves as a terrific introduction to the album’s fantastic closing track “Song of Solomon.”
The album isn’t without some fault though. It does get tiresome towards the end, right before “Modern Meat” and “Song of Solomon” saves what would have been a limp way to go out. “Cafo” is a distortion filled exercise in excess that only gets more boring the longer you stay to listen, and the following song “Inamorata” does nothing to try and cure this problem. With the album clocking in at nearly an hour long, shaving off a couple of these tracks would have no doubt helped the overall presentation of the album. Still, little can be said that would taint the experience of listening to Abasi’s greatest achievement so far as an artist – which is a label that sounds much better than just guitarist. Though I do have a feeling that the best is still yet to come from a name that metal fans should go ahead and get familiar with, that is if you already haven’t.
"Animals As Leaders" is on sale April 28, 2009 from Prosthetic.
