UMUR "Fables of the Sleepless Empire" is the third full-length studio album by Canadian avantgarde/progressive metal act Unexpect. The album was independently released in May 2011. It´s the successor to "In a Flesh Aquarium" from 2006, which was the band´s breakthrough album.

"In a Flesh Aquarium" was a highly complex, technically well played, and experimental avantgarde metal release and it has received a lot of praise over the years, and not surprisingly Unexpect have chosen a relatively similar sound and approach on "Fables of the Sleepless Empire", although "Fables of the Sleepless Empire" sound a little less chaotic and polished compared to its direct predecessor. The vocals vary between female semi-operatic cleans, male cleans, and a varity of male extreme metal vocal styles (growling, snarling, screaming...etc.). In addition to the vocals, drums, guitars, bass, violin, piano, and samples are the instruments used to create the sound. The instrumental part of the music features elements of death metal, black metal, and symphonic metal, and often features classical music influenced sections or elements. All packed into abstract and complex avantgarde metal structures and dissonance. The tracks are ever changing and they take a while to get into and remember.

"Fables of the Sleepless Empire" features a clear, powerful, and detailed sound production, which perfectly suits the material and which help bring all elements of the band´s music to the listener. Upon conclusion "Fables of the Sleepless Empire" may suffer a bit from not being as surprising to the listener as "In a Flesh Aquarium" was, when it was released, but it´s overall another high quality release from Unexpect, and if you enjoyed the sound of "In a Flesh Aquarium", this one is a safe bet. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

UMUR "In a Flesh Aquarium" is the 2nd full-length studio album by Canadian avant garde/progressive metal act Unexpect. The album was released through The End Records in August 2006. It´s the successor to "Utopia" from 1999, although the two full-length studio albums are bridged by the 2003 "We, Invaders" EP.

Stylistically "In a Flesh Aquarium" is female mezzo-soprano- and growling/screaming male vocals led avant garde extreme metal, featuring constant tempo and time signature changes, and the omnipresent use of violin and piano/keyboards in addition to drums, guitars, and bass. The vocal part of the music is quite varied featuring many different extreme metal vocal styles, and female lead vocalist Roxanne "Leïlindel" Hegyesy delivering a theatrical and very convincing performance.

The material features many twists and turns and the tracks often come off almost schizophrenic in nature. The tracks are complex in structure and just when you think you got a hold of where a song is going it unexpectedly changes. The music is very extreme, often dissonant, and is at times an eerie and unpleasant listen. At all times there is a claustrophobic feeling of barely controlled chaos, but Unexpect are an incredibly well playing and skilled seven piece group, who pull off every twist and turn of the music with what seems like ease.

"In a Flesh Aquarium" reeks freak show/dark carnival atmosphere and there are elements from classical chamber music and cabaret too, but the music also features plenty of heavy and fast technical death/thrash guitar riffing and intense drumming (and some pretty crazy slap bass playing), so while this is a very progressive and avant garde tinged metal album it´s first and foremost an extreme metal album. Some of the more "regular" riffs and drum parts could well have been featured on a technical death metal release.

The album feels like it´s divided into two parts, which are bridged by the electronic/symphonic track centerpiece track "Silence_011010701", which serves as an atmospheric breather and a compositional variation, before the second part of the album takes off. The first four tracks are intense and challenging progressive/avant garde extreme metal songs and after "Silence_011010701" is over the second part of the album opens with the sixth track "Megalomaniac Trees" and then into the three part suite "The Shiver". The album closes with the 11:10 minutes long "Psychic Jugglers". It´s a harsh one hour long album, which will probably challenge most listeners and keep them on their toes throughout its playing time and it´s pretty surely an aquired taste if this kind of bombastic, intense, manic, and theatrical album is something you can sit through and enjoy. It requires an open mind and the will to be exposed to the unexpected.

While the band´s preceding releases lacked professional production values, that´s not a problem on "In a Flesh Aquarium", which feautures a powerful, detailed, and intense sounding production job, which perfectly suits the energetic and busy compositions. Upon conclusion "In a Flesh Aquarium" is a high quality avant garde extreme metal release, and even if you are not able to enjoy the manic one hour journey, it´s hard to argue that this is not through and through a bold statement and a high quality release. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.

siLLy puPPy Sonic shockwaves detonated once again a long five years after their second album “In A Flesh Aquarium” when the erratic and eclectic avant-garde musical maestros UNEXPECT simultaneously took the prog and metal communities by storm. The crazed and quirky Quebecois jugglers of supersonic entropy unleashed their followup FABLES OF THE SLEEPLESS EMPIRE which continued the forceful cross-pollination of musical genres like abducted animals that are stuffed into a meat grinder and stuffed into a sausage casing. The dizzying inaccessible mess of sound was resurrected for a second haunting like a circus of doom returning to town and unleashing intoxicated circus clowns out to destroy everything they touch with the musical equivalence of classically trained jugglers passing musical genres around like flaming chainsaws. Like it’s predecessor FABLES delivers all the goods of weaving the ultimate tapestry of several metal styles, gypsy folk, electronica and even tango amongst others and impregnates them into a Western classical underpinning that allows it all to explode into one of the most satisfying examples of controlled chaos in all of contemporary extreme musical expressions.

Infused with bombastic metal riffs and black metal shrieks, ghoulish chants or histrionic outbursts of tormented recitations, the unhinged male vocal contributions of SyriaK and Artagoth are diluted in their abrasiveness by the female vocal loveliness of Leïlindel’s folklore femininity and newbie Borboen’s Paganini flair of violin playing with a style more often reminiscent of a circus gypsy having an extremely high-octane episode. In between it all lies the unique 9-stringed bass lines of ChaotH that connect the dots but only after an enterprising journey through several progressive tornado run riffs of spirited vigor. And then add on the strange lethargic intros that ratchet up the tension while languishing in tranquil torpidity before launching into tumultuous musical terror that bombards the listener with incessant excess all the while creating just enough of a melodic hook to keep your head from exploding. Ah, uneasy listening at its zenith, UNEXPECT raise the bar of musical complexity like a pole runner carrying the Olympic torch all the way up Mt Everest in under 61 minutes.

To say the least, there is nothing to compare UNEXPECT’s music to except, of course, UNEXPECT itself. While very much in vein of “In A Flesh Aquarium,” FABLES does seem to be more focused which is neither good or bad but merely different. The main difference being in the fact that on FABLES musical motifs are allowed to retain a longer shelf life as every musical idea in the universe isn’t as prevalent as on “Aquarium” where a listening experience is equivalent to riding in the eye of a tornado and watching all the notes whizz by in utterly unpredictable ways. Here at least, despite being bombarded by the myriad mega-stimuli, there is a concerted effort to let the hooks sink in a little deeper before the ultimate uprooting and casting off into turbulent atmospheric disturbances. True to their vision with a slighty more polished touch, UNEXPECT retain the crown of most chaotic crazy and creative masters of the avant-garde metal universe. While this one took me longer to gestate in my psyche before the alien forces hatched, i find FABLES OF THE SLEEPLESS EMPIRE to be equally as brilliantly inventive as “Aquarium.” Although it would take another five years and no albums later, the capricious creative ones announced that the band would continue no longer. Now THAT was truly UNEXPECT-ed!

voila_la_scorie This Montreal band uneXpect must rank near the top of weird albums in my collection. I stumbled across them on MMA while checking out top-ranking Canadian albums, which included mostly Rush and Devin Townsend. I had never heard of uneXpect and decided to give them a listen. Whoa-ho! I knew right away that this band was going to be a challenge to listen to. So I bought “In a Flesh Aquarium” partly because it was their highest rated album and also because it was the only album available on Amazon in Japan for a normal price. Someone is selling the “wE Invaders” EP for something like $2,500!

First, if you don’t already know, uneXpect are essentially an avant-garde metal band that combines thrash, black, progressive and symphonic metal styles with a bit of traditional metal thrown in. Add to that some excellent classical piano used frequently and some violin with strong gypsy music tendencies, and some industrial sounds sprinkled with bits of circus type music and a trio of voices that are comprised of clean female vocals and male vocals that go from growls and snarls to shouts and System of a Down-like Tasmanian Devil whatevers. And now perhaps you can begin to imagine what this band must sound like.

There is simply nothing in my collection that comes close to this although if this album were a mountain peak then partway up we might find bands like Suspyre, Disillusion, Dark Suns, or even a bit of Haken. When the mood gets mellower with piano and touches of industrial, and female vocalist Leïlindel sings slowly and clearly, I’m reminded a bit of some White Willow. I’ve read reviews elsewhere that mention bands like Arcturus, Ulver and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, so if you’re familiar with those (I’m not) you might also have a clue about uneXpect’s sound here.

It’s not easy to describe the songs or the music well. All the styles I mentioned about are mostly mixed together in nearly every song. The image that comes to my mind most often is a kind of horror puppet show where the scary puppets look like they are ready to slice your face open but are actually just having fun singing their bizarre songs. Maybe like a “Nightmare Before Christmas” deal without any suggestion of cute or adorable spooks. There’s a feeling of insanity and intensity as the songs careen from musical passage to passage, often changing in only four bars. You can have a symphonic metal segment that is threatening to veer into thrash while a tasteful piano plays along or a quick exchange of shouts and growls while a violin swings and swerves over blasting double bass drum kicks and some progressive guitar riff is flying out like bats from a cave at dusk. A song may suddenly break into a bass solo, a violin solo, a piano solo, a frantic sax solo, a circus music segment, an eastern European folk bit, or absolute chaos and cacophony. Then you might abruptly get a dose of intense metal polka swiftly followed by voices calling and chanting, or some other seemingly incongruous and totally unexpected musical motif. For about 4 to 8 bars. Then it changes again.

It might sound like complete swill and truthfully to some people it does. Ratings I encountered went anywhere from praising this album to blue heaven with upwards of 92% scoring, to middle ground ratings with comments about some excellent songs and several failed efforts, to the album being a complete heap of rubbish. Some reviewers claimed the band had tried too hard to be avant-garde and simply thrown haphazardly together a grocery list of ingredients. Others say it is all done well but doesn’t sound original. As for my opinion, I find the album an excellent listen in part because it’s so crazy but also because the actual playing is achingly top notch and it is incredible that so many different sounds can be woven together to make an insanely wild collection of music. I admit that at moments I wish the vocals wouldn’t sound so much like a death comedy musical, but on the other hand, that’s part of the charm of the album.

Regarding the individual songs, I’ve read people praising “Chromatic chimera”, “Desert Urbania” and “Psychic Jugglers” but being less kind to other tracks. I actually found things to like in every track, including the sometimes maligned “Feasting Fools” and overlooked “Summoning Scenes”. Special mention should also go to “Silence 011010701” for its industrial sound and powerful symphonic conclusion.

This is not an album for everybody. There are no “Living After Midnight” sing-a-longs on here. It’s intense, ultra-busy, and possibly even exhausting. It might take to you ten listens to enjoy or only one. Or you might hate it. I’m rather impressed with it and can enjoy playing the album from front to back or pulling selected tracks off for daily mixed playlists. If possible, I’d like to get one of their two other albums. Hail to the mad marionette musical masters of Montreal!

siLLy puPPy If you’re like me then you started listening to UNEXPECTED’s twisted mangled musical melodies beginning with either “In A Flesh Aquarium” or “Fables Of The Sleepless Empire.” In my case i began with the last and worked my way back in time finally arriving at the debut UTOPIA which i hesitated in even checking out because of the almost universal critique that basically pans it. Well, finally arriving at this debut with nowhere to go except wait for a new album, i have to say that i was totally taken aback by how much i like this. True that it is not the fully formed musical madness of the aforementioned masterpieces but taken on its own terms and comparing it to any metal of 1999 leaves this album in a very interesting place for its time AND it’s one that i actually find myself listening to on a regular basis. It is basically UNEXPECT Light, that is an album that already showed a genre blending prowess but instead of incorporating every known genre in the universe into the mix, this one took a more conservative approach. In fact, this album reminds me of what the Japanese avant-garde metal act Sigh was doing at the same time or at least the closest thing to it.

UNEXPECT was already mastering the art of blending the classical influenced black metal that reminds me of early Ulver with its often operatic vocal tradeoffs with black metal riffs crossed with a healthy dose of death metal growls, riffage and intensity. There is also plenty of traditional metal influence in the mix as well. There also exists lots of progressive metal riffage as well. On board with all the metal influence is a generous dose of Chopin inspired piano runs and to a lesser degree at this early stage the gypsy folk violins but they do appear here and there. While the female vocals on this album contributed only on this debut by Elda are mostly kept in the back of the mix, she does take the lead at times. The songs are generally quite lengthy and go through many changes but there are much more recognizable musical patterns at this stage of the game and for anyone who finds their later works much too busy and impossible to comprehend, they should start here to hear where they are coming from and how they evolved their sonic chaos into the craziness it would become. The music on UTOPIA is roughly 80% extreme metal with classically inspired melodies mixed with traditional metal. The gypsy influences are minimal and the violin plays a subordinate role for the most part.

I’ve fallen for this band but i am finding that the debut album is no exception. I have read countless gripes about the horrible production. I have the 2006 remastered version which i don’t find outstanding but it doesn’t sound horrible either. I have not heard the original recording so all i can do is suggest to try the newer version if that was a reason for not liking this. Musically this is really beautiful. It doesn’t seem like a mess at all. The compositions are well thought out and they flow very nicely together. The lack of future busyness ensures that this is a smoother listen and one that can be listened to less attentively to unravel its mysteries. In fact, there are no mysteries which makes this a great place to begin to appreciate UNEXPECT’s unique take on making avant-garde metal. To me this sounds like a more aggressive version of what Akphaezya would create later on and i would guess that this was an influence for them. Despite this having a running time of 65:34 i always have to listen to the entire album once i put it on. This is a mildly avant-garde metal that will appeal to those who love that style of metal that retains the dominance of the melody. Guess i’m in a lonely room with this one :P