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At War With Self - Torn Between Dimensions
Copyright © 2005 Free Electric Sound
1. The God Interface
2. Torn Between Dimensions
3. A Gap in the Stream of Mind Part One
4. Grasping at Nothing
5. Coming Home
6. The Event Horizon
7. A Gap in the Stream of Mind Part Two
8. Run
9. A Gap in the Stream of Mind Part Three
10. At War With Self
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Both King Crimson and the Beatles felt that progressive rock should be harsh and industrial sounding. At War With Self develop this concept, and create brilliant technical music that could stand to be shaped by more of an artistic influence and less of a chalkboard-and-chord-chart one. Moving beyond jazz, they create structured music which is clearly designed for improvisation, and use the flexibility of underground metal riffs to anchor spacy melodic constructions reminiscent of Cynic, Pestilence and Kong. The problem is that songs are somewhat linear in emotional affect on the listener. There is introductory material, but once you get into each song, it is basically The Prog/Jazz Metal Tune developing in a cut to fill fashion, and then it ends, cursorily. This isn't terrible, but for these guys to get to the next stage, they need to make these songs more distinctive and poetic so they avoid the muzak-y feeling that most light or heavy prog bands create. One has to empathize with these musicians, since having several big names working together means that individualistic emotions pull each piece in many directions, and those are usually resolved by committeework into something relatively predictable. This is the introductory project for this particular grouping, so it is likely they will get more adventurous in the future; if they're sharp, they'll take a hint from both metal and prog rock and adapt custom song structures for a narrative of what is being communicated in each song. Were they to do this, they would take metal back to its root influences, and provide a more stimulating direction than the phone book of "technical" riffs that metalcore provides. As it stands now, this is one of the most advanced musical statements from the metal-related genres of late.
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