THE JOY OF MOTION

So what's all the fuss about, huh? I'll tell you.

I decided to write my review of The Joy of Motion since it had no reviews thus far. I could have easily written the same review for each of the previous albums. They are all worth listening to. They are all a special and unique display of musical prowess, and part of that uniqueness is attributed to the fact Animals As Leaders is a one-man production!

This is one of those albums, one of those artists that are just a must listen. It helps if you are not averse to guitar based progressive metal. I happen to play the guitar so this repertoire is an added gem and treat for my ears!

The Joy of Motion might even be the strongest of their three albums. They are all not very different from each other but this really is not a bad thing at all. The music is just so pleasant to listen to. It's complex yet melodic. But yes, it is quite complex. I happen to love that.

It's an uncompromising display. If you like uncompromising qualities, you just might love Animals As Leaders.

All the fuss about this band is warranted!

Oh and I must add that's it's not all that common to hear a strictly instrumental based project either. That is another very strong point in this particular artist's favour.

Tolerable, Yet Uninteresting

I've never liked Animals As Leaders. I guess I should state that upfront, so anyone who wants to disregard my opinion can do so, before they get too invested in reading what I have to say. I really don't like this whole subculture, the Sumerian records-led teenager brigade of tech- worshippers. Everything about them, from their awful bedroom chugging projects, to their actual enjoyment of memes as cringeworthy and embarrassing as 'doge', to the complete obsession with such empty and emotionless music just grates me, to the point where I would actually call them a cult. Like the hippies or goths or hiphopheads of pre-internet times, we now have djentfags, and I long await their demise.

At the forefront of this movement and on the back of every djentfag's bedroom door are Animals as Leaders, the project of guitarist and "songwriter" Tosin Abasi. I put songwriter in inverted commas for reasons that I will discuss later, since I don't believe Tosin has written a single actual song in his career. This is their third album, released after a highly regarded debut, and a less popular sophomore, both of which were (in my opinion) compressed and useless pieces of guitar wankery, with absolutely zero sense of time or melody or harmony or even how to construct a guitar tone. Yet they were somehow were lauded by both djentfags and also by people whose opinions I trust and respect. Although they are certainly leaders in the scene, AAL aren't really a true djent band in the genre definition; only a small portion of their music is dedicated to chuggity chug chug, most of it going towards messy and tuneless riffing, filtered through some ungodly number of compressors, and scattered with some uninspired electronics and even more uninspired ambience.

Although actually, on the whole, The Joy of Motion is Animals As Leaders' most tolerable release yet. I would hesitate to say 'best', because this still ain't good, but it's got a significantly larger percentage of moments that I'm not pulling my hair out to or dying of internal bleeding, to the point when I actually enjoy a couple of moments here and there. But on the whole, this is Tosin doing as he has done, genre-wise, and it basically sounds identical to the first two records, with a tiny bit more cohesion and a bit less mess.

"But no!" shout the masses of teenagers in their bedrooms, "this one's different! There's bass!"

And yes, there is a bass guitar here, and I'm sure Adam Getgood's formspring account will be flooded over the next few months with billions of questions about the chain he is using at 3:11 in this song or the Axe FX preset he's got on at 0:29 in that song, but does the bass really change anything here? No, no it really doesn't, especially not with that bloody disgusting tone. The Joy of Motion does have some nice grooves every now and then, and the bass is a significant part of this, but it's not really a major point of difference from the first two albums.

The biggest difference here, one that is also due to Mr Getgood's involvement, along with his Periphery bandmate Misha Mansoor (who I am less of a fan of), is the production. Sure, the tones here are still pretty awful, the drums are plastic, the bass is way way waaay too compressed (and slapped more often than need be), but at least I can bloody hear them. On the first two albums, the thing that surprised me the most about the people praising them, was the fact that regardless of how technical these riffs are, they're under a wall of the messiest bloody production this side of Saint Anger and smothered in the highest levels of compression this side of Death Magnetic. No matter how hard I tried to pretend I liked jazz and enjoy Tosin's use of the D-Locrian mode on that sweep or the triplet run in f#-7-chromatic-minor on that breakdown (which is the only way I can imagine people liking this music), I couldn't hear anything at all under the waves of spluttering electronic drums and bad atmosphere. But here, I can actually say that I listened to this record three times, and I didn't have an aneurism.

The production lifts this up tons, but lets be honest, it really just made it a bit clearer, and under the mess that the first two albums were crawling beneath, there isn't too much here. One of the things I hate about djent, often more than the chugging itself, is the genre's obsession with ~trendy ambience~. And it's not as if it's nice ambience, it is literally the most basic setting on a delay pedal, played with the exact same tone. And with Animals As Leaders being the frontrunners in this scene, you'd imagine them to be a bit more inventive, but no, the useless ambience is here, and in even more abundance than before. It's not the fact that they are using it that bugs me, it's the fact that it's so uninspired, and I have heard it so many times before, combined with the fact that it sounds so mechanical and machine-produced. With the heavy parts being so mechanical themselves, it would be nice if the ambient breaks could have some piano or strings or acoustic guitar or any instrument that has a relatively pleasing timbre.

The heavy parts here aren't a big improvement, but the production advances definitely mean I can tolerate them a bit more. Some of the riffing here starts to even emulate electronic music, and with the clearer production, actually sounds pretty cool. The very beginning of the album has a very glitchy and quite interesting riff that, while being a complete mess, is made up with some really choppy and nice drumming. I'm not a big fan of the tones, and the organ in the background is laughable, but the drumming here is really something, and would be decent if it weren't for the terribly robotic kick and snare tones. Solo-wise, this thing is still damn sloppy. I've never been a fan of djent soloing, it is so without melody and direction. Call it 'jazzy' if you want, and yeah, I've always felt the same thing about a lot of jazz soloing to be honest, but to me it's completely messy.

So what is The Joy of Motion in the end? Is it an improvement? Hell yes it is. Will fans like it? Probably not. Will it go down as significant? Well, no, not really.

Because you see, Tosin does not construct songs, or even melodies or riffs quite a lot of the time, he creates exercises and challenges, the sort of stuff that will fill the next generation of guitar textbooks and inspire legions of 12-year-olds to drop gauge, add a few strings and start chugging. It's the new jazz, in my view, this uber-technical mess music, pretentious as [%*!#], great for critical analysis and pretending you have diverse taste, but on the whole meaningless. And I think where The Joy of Motion sits seems a bit vague. There's enough non-wanky stuff for me to not vomit here, but that will also alienate people who want to come at this album with a pen and notepad. But on the other hand, it has enough messy segments and usual Tosin wank for me to not really want to hear it more than a few times. When I listen to this record, I don't really enjoy it; I'm more just surprised that I don't hate it. The Joy of Motion will inevitably be forgotten in the middle ground, wherever Tosin chooses to go next. And honestly, although this hints at an upward trend toward maybe making something I would like, I'm probably not going to bother the man again. He was a great sight to see live and meet, and I appreciate his talent and dedication, but Tosin will always be Tosin, and he will always write this mathematical and mechanical music. And as much as I can tolerate a good deal of The Joy of Motion, I could never really enjoy such soulless music, regardless of any technicality.

4.5/10

Originally written for my Facebook page/blog: www.facebook.com/neoprogisbestprog

Animals as Leaders' third album feels like it's hitting diminishing returns on the djent side of the equation compared to the rather more interesting Weightless, but it manages to just about make the cut thanks to the exploration of jazz fusion and Latin styles that yields a more diverse sound than they've previously enjoyed. At the same time, I can't help but wish that these momentary flirtations with expanding and reconfiguring the group's sound had gone a little deeper, since whilst they add a little spice here, they don't go quite so far enough as to open up enough new creative directions to feel confident about the group's long-term prospects.

I must admit that Technical Metal and even Math Rock aren't anywhere near the top of my favourite Prog sub-genres but once in a while i'll put on something like "The Joy Of Motion" just to be reminded at how incredible some of these musicians are. Complex instrumental music is often described as "cold" but I rarely felt that with this album as there is an organic feeling throughout this record. This is my first taste of ANIMALS AS LEADERS and certainly guitarist Tosin Abasi has blown me away but the drummer Matthew Garstka also needs to be mentioned for his outstanding play.

The first time I put this album on and heard "Ka$cade" a smile came over my face after hearing such complex music with all those punchy sounds. And I have to mention the sound quality which is perfect thankfully which helps in the presentation of such skilled musicians. I love the guitar in this opening track especially just before 4 minutes. "Lippincott" is about precision although I like the calm a minute in with those synth-like sounds. This will appear again later and man this guy can drum.

"Air Chrysalis" is so uplifting after a minute with that beautiful sounding guitar which is a nice contrast to the sections with those deeper sounds. "Another Year" is a lighter track with some cool guitar expressions. Another song that stands out is "Crescent" where it sounds like a hopped up car idling. Love it! My favourite though is "The Future That Awaited Me" which is gorgeous and emotional for me. Such an uplifting sound here and the guitar moves me. "The Woven Web" has a spacey sound after 2 minutes which I really enjoy as well as the heaviness with atmosphere that follows. Great sound before 4 minutes as well. "Nephele" ends the album with heavy riffs and insane drumming as the guitar solos over top. Also check out the beautiful acoustic section.

A very impressive all instrumental album, in fact I have already ordered their debut.

Same old same old: 5/10

The technical proficiency of the musicians from ANIMALS AS LEADERS is admirable pretty admirable, something observable since their unpretentious yet successful debut. THE JOY OF MOTION is their third release, a djenty act with huge influences from jazz. It tries to couple prog metal's mathematically intricacy with jazz's delicacy, something honestly pretty difficult to pull off satisfactorily, however not impossible, assuming LYE BY MYSTAKE's FEA JUR did it perfectly. The fact another band managed to do it successfully left me with an even more bitter impression of AAL. Exactly the characteristic that should be their pinnacling quality, their technicality, ends up scheming the album's demise as it sounds extremely insincere and robotic. The melodies, the arrangements, everything, it all sounds meticulously crafted so the album can come off as djenty, "but, like, definitely NOT only djenty, like, not at all man" . If the complex tracks were toned down, the album could be summarized as an average jazz fusion act, but they aren't. They're technical and they try to attain objectives much further beyond the grasp. THE JOY OF MOTION didn't need to be just tasteless djent with mediocre melodies that we all heard before on many other different "modern metal" bands, maybe it could be something transcendental. Something far more creative, innovative, inventive. But it isn't. It's just djent. There's nothing progressive about doing the same old thing again, not even if all you do is modify the progression a little bit here, a little bit there, and add a spicy, different solo in an unexpected moment. Sorry, AAL, but I didn't buy this.

Heavy, Detailed, Complex, Beautiful

Like many, I was completely blown away by Animals as Leaders debut album. It was music unlike anything I'd ever heard. Not quite a decade later and there are more imitators than you can throw a headless 8 string at. Instrumental djent has become almost synonymous with modern prog metal. Scanning through Spotify, the sound has been so diluted that it's hard to surprise. While AaL certainly didn't sophomore slump with WEIGHTLESS, they didn't achieve that "holy shiz, what did I just hear" of the debut. It was probably impossible.

Enter JOY OF MOTION. In it, AaL may have musically eclipsed the debut. The fact that I almost universally turn to this album rather than any of the other 3 even after 3 years when I want to hear their sound point to that fact. The special sauce that for me takes AaL above the imitators is the musicality. There is a sense of melody, of composition, of ethereal beauty that makes this music meaningful (to these ears) to people beyond metal heads, guitar nerds, and prog junkies. Songs like "The Woven Web" and "Kaskade" are soundscapes that I can dive into, headphones taking me away from the rest of the world. Yet the overall sound is perhaps heavier than ever. Guitarist Tosin Abasi had by this point full integrated his thumb-thumping, slap-bass derived technique which adds a new layer to the mix.

While the music here is unflinchingly complex, I get less of a sense that the band is trying to simply blow their chops as they did during the first two albums. Everything has a purpose, and the melodic lines are more emotionally articulated. To be sure, there are still passages that would frighten young guitarists back to their mothers, but that aspect is less in your face. The rhythm guitar is front and center, and the programming elements continue to be essential glue that accents the music.

Bottom line: Not only my favorite Animals as Leaders album, my favorite modern prog/instrumental djent album

The trio of musicians that is Animals as Leaders is arguably the most technically gifted group of musicians working in progressive metal music today - quite an impressive feat when you consider that technical proficiency is essentially a requirement for achieving prog metal greatness. Tosin Abasi, the band's founding member and primary song writer, emerged from the 2000's metalcore scene with an 8-string guitar ready to djent. Of course, Tosin's inhuman playing abilities and impressive musical imagination ultimately made it impossible for him to limit his musical expression to any one sub-genre. He thus turned to jazz and avant-guard metal to breathe a new kind of life into his compositions.

On 'The Joy of Motion,' Animals have crafted an album that is simultaneously brainy and sophisticated but still capable of supplying some more down to earth fun to its listeners. While it is very unlikely this highly experimental and technical form of music would ever find much success in the mainstream, 'The Joy of Motion' still managed to capture an outsized audience for the group.