While having a djent tone is becoming the new thing to do, there is certainly some quality to still be found with the expansion of this style. Enter Mask of Judas. Originality isn’t the fronrunner here, but the execution is pretty good and I really enjoyed listening to it.
Thanks to the guys over at THE DJENT-LEMEN’S CLUB on Facebook for posting this. You can pick up the debut self-titled EP on iTunes now. I’ll have to check it out.
- MK
That’s right! Solo djenty instrumentalist Keith Merrow (or as he seems to be called now, Merrow)’s new album, Awaken the Stone King, is out now! If you’re looking for an awesome musician shredding all over your face to finish off 2010, this is the place to look! You can buy it here for a measly 10 bucks!
Happy new year, everyone! See you on the other side.
-MK
So the other day, djent-y progressive/ambient metal French outfit Uneven Structure posted a snippet of a prologue to their upcoming release, Februus. Being excited as shit to have a small taste of what’s to come, I scheduled an article with the clip. However, that all became null as Uneven Structure guitarist worC, moniker and side-project of Aurélien Pereira, posted an entire EP titled When The Day Forms. So instead of posting a small teaser, here’s the full EP for your listening pleasure:
[mp3player width=300 height=200 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=worc.xml]
You can download it right here, too.
If you want to hear more of the progress and some clips from Februus (with the vocalist!) because you just so happened to have missed my full, devoted coverage of this band, check out the videos after the jump. It’s gonna be a good one.
HNNNNNNNG YES!
I’ve been dying to hear who the full-time vocalist of Uneven Structure is and as of today, he’s been unveiled. The guy’s name is Matthieu Romarin and he’s the vocalist for another band called Ananta. I was scared they’d hire someone who was ‘meh’, but this guy is pretty fucking good (and damn does he sound passionate). The snippet at the end of the video had me jizzing. Check it out:
I fucking love this band.
Februus still has no release date. Sad face.
-MK
If I haven’t already expressed my undying love for Uneven Structure, then I will now. They are, as I’ve said in a previous post, a band that epitomizes good music. Djent may be new, but I already feel that Uneven Structure are a master of it despite only having an EP out. So in my attempts hopefully deliver some good, exclusive content, I went straight for this man: Igor Omodei (also known by the monikers of Iggy and Eggeh), one of the genius guitarists and songwriters behind Uneven Structure. Within hours of emailing him, I got some answers.
NOTE: English is not his first language so if there’s something you don’t understand I apologize.
Introduce yourself for those who might not know who you are!
I’m Igor “Iggy” Omodei, I play guitar and write stuff for Uneven Structure
Uneven Structure is probably the most badass name in metal. How did you guys come up with it?
Haha, the explanation may be a bit less badass actually. It has nothing to do with the fact we use odd time signatures and unusually long song structures. Actually we’ve been looking for a name that would represent something like floating islands or weird architectural structures, deep, complex and big. It all ended up on Uneven Structure!
You guys released an incredible EP, 8, in December last year to a lot of positive feedback and I personally thought the lyrics were as amazing as the music. Who wrote the lyrics and what’s the whole lyrical theme behind it?
Thanks! Lyrics were written by Daniel and me. It’s all about the “egg or the chicken” dilemma. If divinities induced fanaticism or if it is fanaticism that created these, seen through this eyes of an oracle.
There’s been a movement in heavy music going on recently that anybody paying attention has already noticed and for lack of a better term, we’re going to call it the “Djent Movement”.
We see this in a rise of math metal bands getting signed and/or publicly recognized, those of which include: Periphery, Monuments, Chimp Spanner, Tre Watson‘s solo endeavor, among many others. One band I feel that isn’t getting the hype they deserve would be ROOKS, out of Northbrook, Illinois.
Now everyone knows that the djent genre is dominated by technically above average musicians and one man band prodigies. This is not quite the case with ROOKS. Rather than focusing purely on technical riffs and mind-boggling polyrhythms, ROOKS find their niche in combining the classic djent sound with the attitude driven riffs and aggressive delivery of hardcore (I’m talking about the real Hardcore that came from punk you doofus). It is this volatile melody that I feel makes this band stick out from the pack. Another noteworthy attribute of the band is it’s line up. Featuring an ex-Oceano guitarist (Jeremy is the cool one, not like the lame drama spreading one), an ex-Convoy! vocalist, and I think one or two ex-Monsters members, the band is practically a dream team of sorts.
Below is a few tracks from their + x – (Addition By Subtraction) EP that you can get from ITunes or just pirate off the internet as the band has said themselves that they’re not trying to get rich. Also check out the band on
Myspace and Facebook.
- JB
Carving out a niche of their own in a genre filled with Meshuggah clones, London based experi-metal group Cyclamen is making a name for themselves with a fanbase growing by the day. Cyclamen boasts a repertoire featuring both mathcore chaos and technical aggression to the seemingly polar opposite with post-rock atmospheres and calming beauty in a genre I like to call post-djent.
I swapped emails with Cyclamen mastermind Hayato Imanishi for Heavy Blog Is Heavy’s first ever interview to gain some insight to the world of Cyclamen.
A quick Google search for Cyclamen leads one to find out that a Cyclamen is a flower. What inspired you to name your project after a flower?
Cyclamen is pronounced “Shikuramen” in Japanese, and since “Shi” means death and “Ku” means suffer in Japanese, so even though it’s a pretty flower it’s a taboo to give it in some occasion, like to people who are in a hospital. Also its “Hanakotoba” (translates to “flower word” – In Japanese culture, pretty much every flower has some sort of meaning and it’s important to know the meaning when you are giving flowers to someone) changes according to its colour. Red means “Envy”, white means “Innocence”, for instance.
I thought Cyclamen was fitting name because my music isn’t restricted in one genre – it could be aggressive (e.g. Revenge of the Geeks) or beautiful (e.g. Senjyu) or both in one song (e.g. Never Ending Dream) depending on what songs need to express certain emotion I am aiming to translate via music.
I remember reading on the Cyclamen MySpace a while back that Cyclamen basically started out because you missed your favorite band, Sikth, and wanted to write music in the same vein as them. In light of this, getting the attention of [Sikth vocalist] Mikee Goodman must have been a surreal experience for you, to say the least. How did this collaboration come about and how did it go down?
It was very valuable experience to work with such an awesome and creative vocalist, but since we both are perfectionists we ended up exchanging mails for about 3 months until the final version was made! He was very open to my opinion and understood what I wanted – Awesome guy all around and was real pleasure to work with him. Everyone should check out his new band The Painted Smile, it’s very different from SikTh but still very exciting : )
As time moved on, Cyclamen started to sound less like Sikth and started sounding more like its own thing. Was this a conscious decision or was it just an organic change that happened as writing progressed?
It may sound selfish, but I always write music just for myself. At that time I really needed SikTh-esque tech metal, but right now I am enjoying more post-rock (MONO, This Will Destroy You) and pop (The Ting Tings, B’z (Japanese rock duo)) so that probably reflects to what I write. I am sure once I get enough of these music I will write songs with different influences. But I think there is always certain Cyclamen sound that stays in every song I write – And I always make sure they are good songs obviously haha
