ANIMALS AS LEADERS — Animals as Leaders (review)

ANIMALS AS LEADERS — Animals as Leaders album cover Album · 2009 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
bartosso
Guy wearing a tie and hat plays 8-string guitar... sounds great!

When I've heard ANIMALS AS LEADERS I immediately associated some aspects of it with Steve Vai (And Meshuggah but more about it later). Incredibly technical, this music has something of his style and ambience, something I don't really like, but there, in this album, with all other more progressive elements, it sounded great. So if you don't like the guy check it nevertheless. This is a very good album which deserves strong 7/10. As a whole it is a bit tiresome and not all of the songs are equally good so I can't rate it higher.

Style and composition:

- Instrumental!

- At times extremely heavy.

- Mixture of djent elements (Meshuggah-like polyrhythmic, 8-string guitar riffs; odd time signatures) with some jazz and Vai-like style. Generally melodic with some avant twists.

- A lot of virtuosity. The music is well-flowing and dynamic - very dense, sometimes even excessively - in some parts sounds merge in one.

- Many clean guitar parts with fantastic evolutionary way composition and jazz feel about them.

- Good use of atmospheric pads but I'd skip some of the synths there.

- Funk elements in one song!

Moods: Diverse atmosphere, maverick, otherworldly, slightly disturbing and ominous at times, dreamy.

Highlight: Tempting Time

PS.: There's nice CAFO video clip on YouTube.
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