Conor Fynes
'World' - Gigantic Brain (6/10)
I would be lying if I did not say that this album surprised me. Gigantic Brain's first album was a sixty-two track hour of noise, nonsense, and bad taste. Taking the dissonance and digital choppiness of cybergrind and feeding spoonful after spoonful of noise to me was not something I ultimately found all that enjoyable, even if it was an interesting style that this one man project was playing. To summarize, I really did not like 'The Invasion Discography'. I was however, convinced to check out the second album, with the promise that it would realize the potential I heard in the debut. 'World' is indeed a huge step in a new direction for Gigantic Brain. Instead of focusing on the rusty grindcore elements, the project instead shifts its gaze towards more ambient territory. The result is still a fairly scattered album, but there is a lot more quality and depth here than what I heard before.
While there is still some of the cybergrind moments that 'The Invasion Discography' was full of here, most of Gigantic Brain's sound here revolves around ambient music, using alot of electronics to create soothing soundscapes. There is also a comfortable middle ground here that really impressed me; a melodic post-metal style that Gigantic Brain is very good at doing. Not sounding unlike Devin Townsend at parts, there is a futuristic sound that when paired with the atmospheric guitar work, paints a interesting image of space and nebulae. Gigantic Brain starts on what it without a doubt its strongest note; 'We've Reached The Stars'. A beautifully crafted post-metal track that uses Townsend-esque bombast and a wall of sound, my jaw dropped when I first starting listening to 'World', it was unlike anything I expected a Gigantic Brain album to sound like. Also, at four minutes long, this is comparable to, well, a regular song length, as opposed to the ten second jabs that I heard so much of earlier in this project's life.
Gigantic Brain does revert to its old ways later in the album, with songs that consist of inhumanly fast drum machines and blistering guitar chugging, all compressed into song lengths that rarely peek over the minute-long wall. These tracks don't tend to impress me in any way, especially considering they aren't much more than a reprise of what was on the debut. Thankfully though, these snippets are few and far between, most of the tracks are geared towards soothing ambiance. After a masterful first track though, I did find myself a little disappointed by the rest of the album, and some of these ambient pieces are prone to noodling around with synths.
'World' is definitely a huge, marked improvement over its predecessor, and there are flashes of brilliance here. That being said, it still gives me that meandering sensation with a lot of the filler that is here.