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Dysrhythmia - Barriers and Passages
 Website: Click Here
Music: Click Here
Label: Relapse Records
Buy Link: Click Here
Score: 8/10
as if as
If a mys
teriouSly(“I am alive”
)
brave
ly and(th
e moon’s al-down)most whis
per(here)ingc r O
wing;ly:cry.be,gi N s agAains
t b
ecomin
gsky?t r e e s
!
I’m sure a few of you are saying, “What the fuck?” And the others who recognize the above as an excerpt from an E.E. Cummings' poem are probably uttering, “What the fuck… is this doing in a music review?”
I know, literary analogies in reviews, especially poetic ones, tend to come across as pretentious and crass, but I just couldn’t help myself here. Simply put, there is no better way to explain the sound of Dysrhythmia’s fourth studio release, Barriers and Passages, than a quick comparison to the complex, often puzzling visual orgy of words strung together by one of America’s most avant-garde writers. Now, ass-kissing aside, the likeness is simple: upon first read the scramble of words above are confusing, nonsensical, scattered, and maybe even a bit silly. Now, close your eyes for a brief moment and try to forget everything you were ever taught about grammar from Kindergarten to 12th grade. Open them and instead of reading the poem, let it read you. I’m sure that sounds like some pseudo-hippy riff-raff, but just try it… it’s worth it… you’ll understand, and by the seventh or eighth read you’ll be smiling out loud at the way your mind is grasping what originally looked like a bowl of jumbled alphabet soup.
Quintessentially, it’s exactly the same way this album from the instrumental three-piece signed to Relapse Records works. Forget what you know about music; about melody, about chord progression and traditional rhythm and you’ll enjoy it. Pop this into your stereo, audiophile virgin, and you’ll come away feeling like the Don Juan of instrumental rock. Spin this like any other release—be it Mastodon or Mono—and you’re going to hate it.
Note to those who despised the above paragraph: the literary analogy stops here--at structure. Whereas poetry tends to be eloquent and flowing with romantic content, Barriers and Passages is not. This is not Explosions in the Sky or Mogwai. Its melodies do not float on the crest of a wave before breaking into blissful, swinging lullabies that make your heart palpitate and the sun set in your eyes. Dysrhythmia is as hard and as busy as Ron Jeremy sandwiched between the Olsen Twins. This album is not polite. It will not RSVP or say please and thank you. It will simply come to your party, steal your beer, more than likely piss in your bathtub, and then laugh, leaving you with your jaw on the floor, wishing you could be half as cool.
Barriers and Passages succeeds with its raucous crunch, not simply because it’s loud, but because it is loud and GOOD. Technically speaking, the entire album is clean and crisp from start to finish, sneaking in a spattering of dirty bass at the most unexpected, but oft demanded moments. Each of the ten tracks offers a different glimpse of the individual talent that these guys seem to be in infinite supply of. Things really come together on “An Alley to Compression” -- a track flooded with punchy red herrings that twist and tease. The moment you just start to bite on those screechy, jazzy strings, wishing you had two feet of hair spiraling down your back to thrash about, things come to a grinding halt, snapping into a clean-shaven, unaccompanied, bouncy string solo. Your ears will be doing double takes for days.
To those hip indie scenesters who will try to pass this release off as simply “metal” – you couldn’t be further from the truth. This album is as thick and bouncy as a BBW looking to get laid in an internet chat room. Chock full of character and not afraid to throw its weight around a bit, Dysrhythmia succeed wonderfully in evading the genre trap with a bewildering blend of metal, jazz, and hard funk. On many levels, it’s how they set themselves apart from other metal acts like Isis and Rosetta. While plenty hard and technical, these guys manage to inject a dose of unrefined life into their sound, that while is the antipathy of “poppy”, is completely furious with energy. Honestly, this is the perfect soundtrack to beat your neighbor up to.
Where this release stumbles is that occasionally the energy becomes a bit too much; a tad over the top. With complexities that char your ears upon the first go-around, the pandemonium can be a bit overwhelming and almost exhausting on multiple listens. Of course, a simple solution would be to avoid the repeat button, however, the irony is that this is where the enjoyment of this album really perks: picking out new intricacies and riffs that make your brain dance and ache.
I suppose it’s rather run of the mill anymore to say that an album that avoids the standard clichés of instrumental rock music will manage to leave their imprint behind. 2006 seems to be the year of unrelenting releases, from Te’ to Rosolina Mar, the wordless wonders are pushing the envelope with newfound, experimental rhythms. Still, regardless of the perplexing growth of international talent in this field, Dysrhythmia and their most recent offspring, Barriers and Passages, ultimately stand as a Cortés of instrumental music and with blatant force, will not let you forget their invasion of your speakers.
--Jonathan Brooks
Written By: hostDate Posted: 11/27/2006Number of Views: 1855
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