If you don’t know already, I’m a huge guitar geek. Seriously, I can bore guitarists to death chatting on about guitars, I’m that much of a geek. This geekdom led me to a be a fan of instrumental guitar music. Luminaries such as Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, John Petrucci and the Swedish meatball himself, Yngwie Malmsteen. They’ve all inspired me to be a better player and continue to this day to blow my mind with what they can do on 6 to 7 strings and 24 frets. I thought I’d heard the best of the bunch, that is until the lovely people at Basick Records sent me through Blotted Science’s new EP.
Blotted Science are a prog/instrumental/metal supergroup formed with three of the finest metal musicians of anyone’s time. Leading the band, shredding the guitar strings, pestering keyboards and generally dealing with the writing duties is the painfully talented Ron Jarzombek (Watchtower, Spastic Ink), handling the low end of things on bass duties is Alex Webster whom you might recognise as Cannibal Corpse’s bass player and lastly, Obscura’s drummer Hannes Grossman keeps everyone in time. So far, so perfect.
The concept behind Blotted Science is to satisfy Jarzombek’s love of science, gore and horror films as well as his skill as a metal musician. The 7 tracks on offer here are all scored to particularly nasty sequences from films, such as the bug swamp scene from the 2005 remake of King Kong, or the sequence in Slither where the leading character is attacked in her home by the horrible worm things.
Because the music is scored to moving pictures, it is like listening to an orchestral soundtrack to a movie, just with blast beats instead of timpani. There’s no verses or choruses to speak of, just constant flowing music. When you watch the music with the videos synched you can see the real genius of what Jarzombek has achieved here.
There are several genuinely amazing things about this EP. Firstly, Jarzombek has written everything with what is called a 12 tone technique. Put simply, there are 12 tones in the chromatic scale (so C, C#, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, Bb, B). When you write something in a certain key, some notes get left out, some aren’t used at all, some are more important than others. The 12 tone technique in writing means that all the notes are used an equal amount of times, all notes are as important as each other and the piece is devoid of key. It’s an incredibly difficult method of writing music, especially when the music is a complex as Blotted Science are playing.
The next amazing thing about The Animation Of Entomology is the sheer skill on display. All three musicians are obviously at the top of their game, but its truly astounding how good the playing is on this EP. I would normally recommend specific examples to people listen to, but its so hard to pull out what I would consider the perfect example of what this EP displays. I would say Cretaceous Chasm would be the best example, I’ll include the video for it synced with King Kong below so you can see exactly what is going on.
Jarzombek’s guitar work is stunning. From low tuned, oddly timed riffs to insane shredding, Jarzombek can do it all. The opening of Ingesting Blattaria is probably one of his finer compositions. Within the first minute the track has already been through 3 different movements and distinct changes and it keeps on changing. The guitars turn around on a pin head, one second riffing, the next shredding. Its unsettling sometimes to follow, but thats clearly the intention with the music being scored to unsettling images.
The bass work from Webster is superb. The man is an amazing bass player, evidenced by his tenure with Cannibal Corpse, he can do to a bass things most guitarists can’t do and with Blotted Science, he really brings his A-game. What I love about this EP though, is that you can hear the bass throughout. Even when things get really heavy in Vermicular Asphyxiation you can still hear the bass. Not content to be outdone by the guitars, Webster’s bass lines are complex and wandering, filling in spaces that most people wouldn’t even know were there.
This wouldn’t be a prog/death/metal supergroup without some insane drumming and fortunately, Grossman more than accomplishes. His skill behind the kit is astounding, managing to keep time, be intricate, heavy, light, thundering and flickery all in keeping with Jarzombek’s insane compositions. The scope of time signature changes must have been a huge challenge for him to keep up with as the entire EP is full of odd meters and tempo changes, in fact there are some moments where it’s not clear whether the band are following the drums or vice versa, its truly astonishing. A huge amount of praise should be heaped Grossman’s way for the four part epic A Sting Operation, the drumming on those four tracks is demonically superb. Really, it is.
As instrumental records go, this is just perfect. There’s no pretension involved with Blotted Science, they know they’re amazing musicians an they just get on with it. What Jarzombek and his men have brought to the table is an EP full of music designed to amaze and astound. There’s not a single thing I can fault this EP for, it’s absolutely perfect.
If you are into instrumental, prog, death metal or just fancy something completely insane, then get this EP, you will not be disappointed. I stake my reputation on it.
10/10
Tracklist:
1. Ingesting Blattaria
2. Cretaceous Chasm
3. Vermicular Asphyxiation
4. A Sting Operation:
I. Human Barbequed
II. Cessation Sanitation
III. Seeing Dead People
IV. Omitting Eyes
The Animation Of Entomology is available on 28/11/11 through Basick Records
You must be logged in to post a comment.