Atheist: Jupiter

ATHEIST: JUPITER (2010)

1) Second To Sun; 2) Fictitious Glide; 3) Fraudulent Cloth; 4) Live And Live Again; 5) Faux King Christ; 6) Tor­toise The Titan; 7) When The Beast; 8) Third Person.

Honestly, I am not quite sure that what the world needed most in 2010 was another Atheist album. The relatively small fanbase that these guys had in their prime had almost certainly dissipated, and a seventeen-year break between studio recordings could only mean two things: either this would be a formally nostalgic venture, or they would try to «modernize» the old sound by taking hints from the modern metal scene. Neither of the two perspectives sounds particularly thrilling, especially when you're talking about a «tech death metal» band whose old bag of tricks used a million different ways to always puncture the exact same emotional nerve and no other.

Additionally, even on a formal level this is quite a different band from the old Atheist. The only constant link holding most of the discography (bar Elements) together is drummer Steve Flynn, whose style and enthusiasm have not shifted a bit: fills, rolls, and punches still keep flying in all directions, capable of shifting from thrash to progressive polyrhythms and back in the blink of an eye. Shaefer, on the other hand, is no longer playing even rhythm guitar; his participation is limi­ted to songwriting and «singing», and the «singing» suffers quite a bit from the demands of mo­dern production — it is less echoey and much more upfront now, so it rather feels like a rabid guy is just spitting directly in your face, without a single whiff of «demonic presence» or whatever it is that textbook death metal vocals are supposed to convey.

With two completely new guys handling guitar and bass duties, Jupiter has its Atheist creden­tials somewhat diluted from the very beginning. Of course, there can be little doubt about the ba­sics: it is going to be a heavy, brutal, loud, professionally played and recorded metal album, al­though, curiously, quite short at that (running just over half an hour; not that «classic» Atheist al­bums were much longer, but one could expect a shift here, considering that the record was almost five years in the making — or, at least, in the planning). But take one step beyond the basics, and disappointment might set in pretty soon.

First and foremost, there is no bass on this thing. Well, technically speaking, there is, but, appa­rently, Jonathan Thompson was so busy laying on additional layers of guitars over the regular guitar guy (Chris Baker) that he all but forgot about his primary duties. For a band whose bass­lines were always just as important as the regular guitar parts — it was always the rhythm section, after all, that provided most of the jazz links — this is a staggering setback; if this was some sort of deli­berate move (to make the album sound «different»?), it was a stupid one.

Second, the guitar sound also suffers from «purified» modern production. Where the guitars once used to be hellishly low and deep (not a unique trait of Atheist, of course, but a solid trademark of ye goode olde metal), now the pitch is higher and the sound waves seem shallower, never enough to drag you down to the depths of Hell with them. And Baker and Thompson represent this rather ty­pical breed of modern guitar players: each note played to utter perfection, all the fast and com­plex parts performed to the unanimous-jury grade of 10.0, but without any inborn ability to create meaningful atmosphere.

Add to this a complete lack of diversity — not only is the album completely devoid of any styli­stic twists (acoustic interludes, keyboard flourishes, etc.), but almost each song follows exactly the same pattern: double-tracked guitars hammering out some complex, unmemorable riff, eventual­ly drifting away into generic thrash territory, then going through one or two time signature changes just to remind us of the band's legacy. In short, more or less the same they were doing in 1989 on Piece Of Time, but with the «benefits» of sanitized production, bass elimination, and an even more annoying vocal presence.

Basically, there is just no need for this album these days, not when the «intellectually-oriented» crowds have all the comforts of heavy math-rock like BATS, and the easier-going metalheads have... uh, I won't even be starting on that list. The not-so-sad truth, the way I see it, is that Athe­ist had their brief three seconds of glory in the early 1990s, but now it's just too late — for Jupi­ter to be credible, respectable, or enjoyable in an above-the-ordinary way, we'd have to have a miracle on display, and heavy metal bands are generally slow on miracles once they have already established their thang. Thumbs down — although, if «tech-thrash metal» is the one wavelength that truly sets you spinning, feel free to disagree with that rating, because, in the end, it just reflects my opinion that Jupiter has no soul to it, and how could we ever prove that?

Check "Jupiter" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Jupiter" (MP3) on Amazon

Atheist: Unquestionable Presence - Live At Wacken

ATHEIST: UNQUESTIONABLE PRESENCE: LIVE AT WACKEN (2009)

1) Unquestionable Presence; 2) On They Slay; 3) Unholy War; 4) Your Life's Retribution; 5) An Incarnation's Dream; 6) Mother Man; 7) And The Psychic Saw; 8) Piece Of Time.

Thirteen years passed in a flash and finally Atheist are back! Well, sort of. This lineup, assembled for some rejuvenating touring in 2006, includes Kelly Schaefer (vocals and rhythm guitar only, still suffering from the carpal tunnel thing), old time drummer Steve Flynn — the band's major source of pride and joy, bassist Tony Choy, and two more completely new guitarists coming from Gnostic (there should be a clever pun on the importance of going from «Gnostic» to «Atheist», but I don't have the time to come up with one).

To commemorate the glorious fact of the reunion and gain extra time while trying to assemble a new studio album, Schaefer and the kids released this «experience», which is really a 2-CD pack­age: the first CD records a complete live performance at Wacken Open Air in 2006, and the se­cond CD is just a «best-of» compilation, in case the veteran fans already wore out their old al­bums a de­cade ago and the new crowds need a quick introduction to the art of merging the un­mergeable (death metal and avantgarde jazz) in an age when heavy players usually preferred to merge the mergeable (blues metal and mainstream pop).

Anyway, the result is an obvious rip-off: the compilation does not have any outtakes or rarities, and the concert CD is just eight songs that clock in under a measly 35 minutes. Considering that Atheist never released an official live album in their prime, one might think it initially useful. However, it is largely superseded now by the bonus tracks attached to the CD edition of Ele­ments — a set of six songs recorded for a radio broadcast in 1992, in very good quality and, fun­ny enough, featuring a relatively shy and quiet style of introducing the tracks, instead of the pre­dictable stadium-geared roar on Live At Wacken. (Probably the only good argument in favor of live radio broadcasts over «proper» live albums).

The entire setlist is based on the first two albums, completely ignoring Elements, although this may be due to the fact that Steve Flynn, the drummer, did not play on that one and did not want to learn the parts of his replacement, rather than a general «denial» of its existence. But that is not really a problem. What might be a problem is that the new guitarists do not have quite the same set of tones that made the original records so crisp. Here, the guitar sound veers towards extra dis­tortion, coming at the expense of brutal heaviness, and the results kick plenty of ass, but much less of the brain, if you know what I mean. (Actually, this is a rather typical flaw of live metal al­bums — for some reason, either metal guitarists do not bother to reproduce their «perfect» studio tones live or this is just a technical impossibility — but some situations are worse than others, and Live At Wacken falls into the «some» rather than the «others» category).

On the other hand, you do have Steve Flynn, whose technique and energy have not changed one bit in the fifteen years that he had not played with Atheist — and you have all these songs that still carry the same badass attitude, so why complain? If you are already an Atheist fan and can get this stuff cheap enough, go ahead. But if you are not yet convinced, don't let this be your in­troduction. You need those old-time guitar tones if you are determined to develop a taste for this band. Although, on the other hand, getting the whole package also makes sense — most people will probably prefer an Atheist compilation over the entire three albums.

Atheist: Elements

ATHEIST: ELEMENTS (1993)

1) Green; 2) Water; 3) Samba Briza; 4) Air; 5) Displacement; 6) Animal; 7) Mineral; 8) Fire; 9) Fractal Point; 10) Earth; 11) See You Again; 12) Elements.

According to some sources, we owe the existence of Elements only to the band's contractual ob­ligations: having disbanded in 1992, Atheist came together one last time (or so it seemed at the moment) only to put this album together so that they could get out of their contract with Metal Blade records without a serious headache. In addition, Kelly Shaefer had developed carpal tunnel syndrome and was unable to play lead guitar, so the band had to recruit a third guitarist, Frank Emmi, to take over fifty percent of lead playing duties. Hence, conditions for creativity flow were definitely less than ideal.

That said, Elements sounds quite far removed from a generic, disinterested contractual obligation. As may be noticed by just glancing at the song titles, it is a concept album — other than songs de­dicated to each element in particular and all of them at once, the band throws the notions of «ani­mal» and «mineral» into the mix, and starts things out with a general eco-anthem (ʽGreenʼ), although, actually, the majority of the songs here have an ecological undercurrent: it would be fairly hard to find someone representing the interests of Greenpeace more accurately than this bunch of death metal warriors. One notch scored for dedication.

Second, of the three «classic era» Atheist albums, Elements represents the biggest departure from the formula — a disappointment for those stark fans who'd want more of the same, but a bit of a relief for the reviewer, who finally has to withdraw the most troublesome criticism: that of all the songs merging together into one big, unsegmentable lump. This problem is now overcome in a simple, but working way: many of the songs are separated by small interludes that show the band branching out in different directions — ʽSamba Brizaʼ features the band's dexterous rhythm sec­ti­on backed by guest pianist David Smadbeck; ʽDisplacementʼ and ʽFractal Pointʼ present a couple of deeply-distorted, but ly­rical slow guitar solos; and ʽSee You Againʼ has some pretty, echo-la­den acoustic picking. Nothing too amazing, but yes, we do need these delimiters.

As for the songs themselves, most of the textbook thrash attitude has by now dissipated complete­ly. Where, in the past, they would alternate jazzy time signatures with breakneck chugga-chugga passages, they now consistently keep the odd signatures throughout the pieces — never a dull moment for the drummer boy. «Catchiness» still hardly appears on the menu, and, for that reason, the new approach is not necessarily better than the old one: the themes are still quite hard to me­morize, and the emotional effect is completely uniform regardless of whether they are singing about water, air, fire, or earth — this is probably the biggest conceptual mistake of this conceptu­al album. Then again, they are not singing of the nice spiritual properties of these elements, but rather of various catastrophes, man-made or natural, associated with them, and catastrophes are al­ways catastrophes, be they floods, quakes, or fires, so that could be one possible cop-out.

We do have more individual markers placed on the songs than we used to. The Latin acoustic part in ʽWaterʼ, for instance, which does not so much replace the metal basis of the song as it flows in and out of it (flows, hear that?). The odd little guitar-led merry-go-round in the bridge section of ʽWindʼ, whirling around the speakers (whirling, mind you). The «siren»-mode guitar playing on ʽFireʼ; the monkey laugh guitar imitation on ʽAnimalʼ — these are all mostly just minor flouri­shes, but they are at least worth a mention. The best guitar leads, by the way, are on ʽMineralʼ, where each solo is introduced by a gorgeously ominous set of trills that I'm only too happy to add to my very small collection of «finger-flashing bits with genuine evocative power». Granted, I am not too sure what it is exactly that they evoke, but does it really matter? That's why we have the word «evocative» in the lexicon in the first place.

It is hardly a big surprise that, overall, Elements tends to be rated poorer than its predecessors, but that is just because it is a little harder to headbang to it — you have to learn quite specific headbanging moves, and it can take a long time. The band members, judging by the live backlog they would perform upon the later reunion, never thought all that much of it, either — perhaps they, too, were sorry about going so far in the «Latin / jazz» direction that the «thrash» sign all but disappeared from the horizon. But on the large scale of things, these arguments seem rather petty — after all, just because the speed rates are slightly lower and the drum parts slightly more syncopated does not mean that Elements does not rock just as hard. I give it the same thumbs up as everything else, and I appreciate the will to change, particularly when it is manifested on an al­bum they did not even intend to make in the first place.

Check "Elements" (CD) on Amazon

Atheist: Unquestionable Presence

ATHEIST: UNQUESTIONABLE PRESENCE (1991)

1) Mother Man; 2) Unquestionable Presence; 3) Retribution; 4) Enthralled In Essence; 5) An Incarnation's Dream; 6) The Formative Years; 7) Brains; 8) And The Psychic Saw.

This follow-up to Piece Of Time is usually hailed as the «ultimate» Atheist experience, despite (or, perhaps, due to?) being only thirty minutes long, and also despite having been recorded in the wake of the tragic death of the band's bass player Roger Patterson in a touring van accident; those who really care can always check out the demo versions of the songs, which make up for the en­tire second half of the current CD and feature Patterson's playing. His replacement, Tony Choy, is competent enough to handle his lines, although my brief impression is that, as a result, the album is not as heavy on the bass as its predecessor (at the very least, there aren't quite as many bass so­lo passages this time).

The reason why Unquestionable Presence gets all the acclaim is that the band moves even far­ther away from the death metal formula and ever closer to the intricacies of hard bop and free-form jazz. Of course, to fully understand this, you have to replace the metal guitars in your mind with pianos and saxes, and then, perhaps, a distorted vision of Eric Dolphy will fly by in a trans­cendental haze. If the vision remains inconjurable, just think of it as really, really fucked-up death metal. Well — if death itself is a major fuck-up, why shouldn't death metal be one?

Unfortunately, I still have a hard time telling one song from the other. But at least this time aro­und, there are occasional interludes that go somewhat beyond fifteen seconds of atmospheric syn­thesizer fiddling. ʽMother Manʼ, for instance, incorporates a few lyrical bits of bass / melodic gui­tar interplay, sprinkled with chirping birds to remind us of the beauty of nature, so hopelessly spoiled by industrialization, pollution, and detrimental sonic waves generated by death metal gui­tars that dominate the other parts of the song. ʽAn Incarnation's Dreamʼ starts off with a folksy acous­tic passage (this can be seen as a humble tribute to «regular» metal). And most of the other tracks, this way or another, incorporate extra melodic guitar bits, albeit usually short ones, wed­ged somewhere in the thin cracks of the stop-and-start passages; of the fully incorporated solos, the one that begins at around 2:00 on ʽRetributionʼ is of particular note — if only it were attached to a more memorable riff!...

Lyrically, it's the same old shit all over again ("man prepares to meet his destiny", as Ozzy once sang and since then ninety percent of death metal bands have been doing nothing but commenting on the issue), but vocally, it seems like Shaefer has given up on trying to «growl» and comfortab­ly settled in the «snapping» mode, which is good, since it allows us to take stuff more seriously — especially since its combination of breakneck speed with mind-bending chord changes is it­self more in the «post-hardcore» ballpark than in the death metal one. But overall, there is no trying to pretend that any of these songs have different identities: even their structures are generally simi­lar, with a regular alternation of «funky», «signature-mocking», and «speed metal» parts — one could try and build a working model for this shit, if one cared enough.

Hence, another «intellectualized thumbs up» coming on here, but really, writing a useful review for such an album would be a feat of the mind comparable to writing a good review for an Or­nette Coleman record, and I have never read one. Where riffs trigger particular emotions or paint particular impressions, talking about them is easy. Where they just produce a «wow, that's, uh, clever» feeling, you need a good musicologist, and most of them are busy dissecting Glenn Gould rather than Atheist anyway.

Check "Unquestionable Presence" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Unquestionable Presence" (MP3) on Amazon

Atheist: Piece Of Time

ATHEIST: PIECE OF TIME (1989)

1) Piece Of Time; 2) Unholy War; 3) Room With A View; 4) On They Slay; 5) Beyond; 6) I Deny; 7) Why Bother?; 8) Life; 9) No Truth.

«Technical death metal» is a subgenre forever trapped in its «sub» aspect. What does one really get by combining breakneck speed / ultraheavy riffage / growling vocals / mock-Satanic lyrics with complex time signatures / unpredictable song structures / elements of free-form jazz and ato­nality? Instead of attracting a joint herd of metalheads and prog nuts, bridging the gaps between the two, this kind of music is more likely to alienate both — prog nuts will either be terrified of the death metal clichés or tend to laugh them off, while metalheads will find it a bit difficult to move around the mosh pit when that rhythmic pattern is prone to metamorphosing at unpredic­table intervals. (Not that there are any genuine limits to the power of moshing for the well-sea­so­ned mosher). Which basically explains why Slayer and Rush are superstars while Atheist, whose idea was to combine the virtues of both, are not.

But not for lack of trying, of course. On the technical side, these guys are fairly hard to criticize. Lead vocalist Kelly Shaefer does not so much «growl» as he «snaps» and «barks», bringing the style a bit closer to hardcore punk than to regular death metal. Guitar work, shared between Kelly and Rand Burkey, is up to the highest standards of the genre (not much of a surprise, though: if you’re into death metal, your technique is either superb or you’re not into death metal); bassist Roger Patterson takes his cues from Chris Squire rather than Cliff Burton, and drummer Steve Flynn is a big lover of polyrhythms, hands and feet flying in every direction in a state of brother­ly democracy for each limb.

In addition, Atheist, as prime representatives of the intellectual pride of Florida, are not content with the usual formulaic guts-and-gore lyricism: in interviews, Schaefer remembers the lyrics of early stuff like ʽLifeʼ (“If chainsaws are your fantasy, I’ll cut your body into three”) with horri­fied embarrassment. It’s not as if they are divine masters of the word — they simply come up with a plain agenda of promoting freedom, individualism, «brainism», and, of course, atheism that is no better or worse than anyone else’s, and, again, this brings them closer to the «hardcore» spirit than the cheese-stained Breath Of The Apocalypse. Of course, in this setting, the regular bowel-cleansing «wwweeeeaaaaarrrgggh!» that Shaefer lets out in between all the preaching do come across as somewhat unnecessary. Maybe they are supposed to represent the protagonist re­gurgitating all the religious shit crammed in his bowels by a three-thousand year old tradition.

This is as far as I can go with the appraisal, though. Problems start at the usual point of entry: when you realize that it is all but impossible to tell one song from the other. Not even the slow-to-fast ratio of the tempos is any good indication — Atheist are too smart to let you catch them like that, and almost every tune includes transitions from slow to fast and back again, the «fast» usual­ly in the more faithful speed metal pattern, the «slower» going heavy on the polyrhythms and syn­copation and jazzy jumping (but always with the same metallic guitar tones).

The riffs are way too speedy and too complex anyway to allow individual notes and chords to trace an emotional pattern; the vocals create atmosphere, but not hooks; and the finger-flashing metal solos are the least interesting element of the lot — they sound like any other speed metal solo ever played. The overall sound is highly unusual, for sure, but this unusualness comes at the expense of completely forsaking individuality of the tracks, apart from the fact that one or two of them open with «moody» little bits of doom-laden electronic effects. Not that this is so much dif­ferent for many of the serious jazz albums from which Shaefer and the boys drew parts of their inspiration — but at least the best of those albums always knew how to introduce a memorable theme before veering off into a world of shapeless improvisation. These boys riff and riff like there was no tomorrow on their anti-religious propaganda pieces, yet they might just as well have left out the in-between song breaks. One continuous forty-minute long «progressive death metal symphony» would seem more honest in this context.

As it is, I can only talk about the overall sound of this thing: technically mind-blowing, emotio­nally rousing if you like to headbang to weird time signatures, and, most importantly, hard to laugh off, except over those brief intervals where Shaefer is getting electrocuted by his own vo­mit all over the microphone. But «hard to laugh off» does not automatically mean «spiritually overwhelming». On their next album, the band would move a little further away from the strict regulations of the genre; Piece Of Time is, however, very rigid in its metal guitar-metal bass-monster drums-growler pipes formula. I give it an «intellectual» thumbs up for recognizing the effort to lift the genre into another dimension, but I am not going to jump for joy just because somebody, somehow, out of nowhere, invented «metal-fusion» one day — I’d like to see a good reason for that invention, which Piece Of Time does not really offer.

Check "Piece Of Time" (CD) on Amazon