ANIMALS AS LEADERS

Is it really possible? Can Tosin Abasi really follow up one of the most talked about guitar albums of 2009? Well let me tell you something. He keeps going from strenght to strenght. That is of course not to deny bandmates Navene Koperweis and Javier Reyes any credits. Now finally enjoying the benefit of a real drummer and a considerably more vibrant production (not to rag on Misha Mansoors production of the first album, but it is) this can reasonably be seen as AAL's real debut album. Right away the choppy Djent rythms catch a hold of you, and yes i mean that. This is a CATCHY album! Thanks to the new production the solos are much more pronounced and clear, and Koperweis makes a strong effort behind the drumkit.

It is hard to describe how good this album is in detail, without needing to go into technical details, but believe me this is Guitar at its finest. In fact i put this album besides "Are You Experienced?", "Van Halen", "Rising Force", "Friday Night In San Fransisco" and "Shut Up And Play Yer Guitar" as one that is important to the developmet of the art. Highly recommended for all lovers of virtuosity.

Is Djent really a subgenre or just a style of playing? Well, if Animals as Leaders' Weightless is anything to go by, one thing's for sure: it certainly isn't much like the bulk of Dream Theater- inspired progressive metal bands. Djent groups can be derided in some quarters for getting overly fancy with their technical playing, but I don't really hear that here - whilst there's no doubt that this is an album with a highly technical focus, the band never resort to aimless noodling, instead creating a wonderfully atmospheric piece which proves that you can combine technical excellence with emotional resonance. If Djent is really nothing more than a particular flavour of prog metal, then finally this is prog metal I can really get excited about.

Animals as Leaders is one of those bands that completely took me by surprise. I've heard a lot of extraordinary music, and plenty of mediocre music, but no matter who told me these guys were amazing, I wouldn't have been prepared for what was to come. They are completely unique - I'd describe their style as "Progressive Jazz/Metal/Techno Fusion". Or something like that. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this band is that there are only 3 members, and no bassist. They are strictly instrumental. The lead guitarist of the band, Tosin Abasi, has developed a unique style of guitar playing where he combines guitar playing techniques with bass playing techniques, and employes the use of an 8 stringed guitar that has a bass string or two. I highly recommend looking up Tosin Abasi on youtube sometime ? it will be one of the most amazing musical feats you've ever witnessed, I promise. When I listen to Animals as Leaders, I find it hard to go back to listening to anyone else - this music is so beautifully complex that after hearing it everything else seems less amazing, and often I must listen to something simplistic and soothing to sort of cleanse the palette, if you will.

In this, their first album, Animals as Leaders has this amazing method of building up an agressive soundscape filled with dirty heavy riffs and dissonance that builds and crescendos until you almost can't take it, and then all of a sudden they abbruptly pull back, shocking the listener with the beautiful contrast. The technicality of the riffage is simply astounding, and Tosin Abasi pulls off feats of musicality that I never thought possible. Behind all of this, drummer Navene Koperweis astounds with his layering, thunderous rhythm section. This album is one of those albums where I found that on first listen, certain songs stood out to me while others I didn't like so much, but after subsequent listens my perspective would change and I would have new favorites after each listen. This album is a perspective changing masterpiece.

Animals as Leaders - st (2009)

Tosin Abasi's Animals as leaders is more like a project then a real band. This album is a vehicle for showing his amazing skills as a guitar-player and his daring composition style. The result is an extremely fast instrumental metal-fusion album with a sort of modern approach to Holdsworth's guitar techniques. All compositions are combinations of ideas and there's no concept, advanced song-writing or progressive mind-set to be found. We are listening this music for the bizarre technique and some interesting harmonic findings that actually do remind us of other progressive metal acts. The time signatures also are intelligent. Some songs evoke words like 'technology' or 'future'.

The techniques of Tosin Abasi are however quite interesting. Not only does he play fast metal styled shreds, but he also has some tabbing techniques and clean solo's that are original. With his eight-string guitar (two extra lower strings) he wrote some short modern guitar pieces that stand out because of the variety in pitch, that was never heard on six-strings guitars. Interesting as it may be, don't expect catchy melodies.

Conclusion. A musician's album full of modern guitar pyrotechnics that is original enough to be worthwhile listening to, whilst some of the compositions are also interesting because of their dark fusion moods. Guitar players should have healthy self-esteem before getting into this. Not the kind of soulful prog I like, but good enough for three and a halve stars.

Worthy Successor to the Throne of Djent++

"Progressive" Metal has always been a strange term as many of the genre's biggest names make no bones about looking backwards for inspiration. Dream Theater kept 80's style metal alive even in a slightly altered form. Opeth combined melodic death metal with 70's prog. When Animals as Leaders hit the scene in 2009 with their self titled debut, many in the metal community including myself felt that finally we were getting something truly new. While AaL's sound clearly owes nods to Meshuggah and shred demons from a generation before, no one has made music like this before. With the release of sophomore effort WEIGHTLESS, bandleader Tosin Obasi and his crew prove that they weren't finished pushing the envelopre.

For those unfamiliar, Animals as Leaders is instrumental metal at its most technical. The group is a trio comprised of two 8-string guitarists and a drummer / programmer. The rhythm parts are comprised of downtuned, highly syncopated odd time grinds, jazzy arpeggiations, and plenty of the signature "djent" sound. If Cynic and Meshuggah had a baby who went to Juilliard, the music would sound like Animals as Leaders.

WEIGHTLESS shows the band playing to their core audience and making an even more demanding album than the debut. The album is heavier, more complex, and contains more electronica. Where I felt comfortable recommending the debut to non-musicians for its strange intense beauty, WEIGHTLESS is an album for music nerds. The whole band explores their personal muses more deeply, and for a guitar / prog / metal fool such as myself, the result is pure genius. There are moments of beauty here, still. But this clearly is not an album for everyone.

For those who already know the debut, WEIGHTLESS explores much more territory. There are more melodic passages, more dissonance, nastier riffs, and the programming is much more integrated into the overall sound rather than an occasional embellishment. Tosin (and the whole band) clearly haven't lost an ounce of technique, and if anything show off a little more. This isn't bad considering the apparent purpose of the album, which is to give fans what they want.

The narrowed niche keeps this from masterpiece status for me, but this is a very very strong album which I highly recommend to all fans of jazz metal, djent, tech metal, odd time signatures, guitar virtuoso playing, and anyone looking for what's truly fresh in music.

Animals as Leaders is one of those bands that completely took me by surprise. I've heard a lot of extraordinary music, and plenty of mediocre music, but no matter who told me these guys were amazing, I wouldn't have been prepared for what was to come. They are completely unique - I'd describe their style as "Progressive Jazz/Metal/Techno Fusion". Or something like that. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this band is that there are only 3 members, and no bassist. They are strictly instrumental. The lead guitarist of the band, Tosin Abasi, has developed a unique style of guitar playing where he combines guitar playing techniques with bass playing techniques, and employes the use of an 8 stringed guitar that has a bass string or two. I highly recommend looking up Tosin Abasi on youtube sometime - it will be one of the most amazing musical feats you've ever witnessed, I promise. When I listen to Animals as Leaders, I find it hard to go back to listening to anyone else - this music is so beautifully complex that after hearing it everything else seems less amazing, and often I must listen to something simplistic and soothing to sort of cleanse the palette, if you will.

Weightless is the second album by AAL, and in this album we find they have toned down the aggressive passages just a bit, and explored their Jazz Fusion side a little bit more I think. There is more of that electronica sound this time around as well. You will hear Tosin experiment with new techniques that did not appear on the first album.

Wave of Babies is a single by Prog Metal band Animals As Leaders. They play a hyper-complex style of metal with influences ranging from Jazz to even the occasional electronic beat.

This single is a great song for all the AAL fans out there, especially as this is not to be found on their two studio albums. I find this song to be very enjoyable, with great axework by Tosin and also some stunning Bass work on the Bass solo in the middle of this song. I'm kind of surprised this was not one AAL's newest release as it is certaintly worthy of being on a full length.

If you can find this single then het it, you won't be dissapointed with this one.

Animals as Leaders - Animals as Leaders

This instrumental prog metal album by guitar master thingy thingy, sounds a little like a collision between jeff beck and jeff loomis. Animals as Leaders presents a unique musical recipe, a fusion of beauty and the beast that challenges the listener's brain with its mix of delicacy and aggression. The use of an 8 string guitar, in particular, allows thingy thingy to create his own sonic feel, an aural gastronomy reminiscent, in a slightly odd way, of Frederik Thordendal or Cynic, even in the quieter passages.

Sure, I'm not the world's greatest fan of solely instrumental albums, my interest lying largely in lyricism and poetry. But I think Animals as Leaders does more than enough to hold the attention of the listener, touching a variety of musical bases in the process. It works well as a background to other activities, and as an entity in its own right.

Ultimately, however, this is non-essential, a charming and lesser-known curio that will very happily augment any already well-formed musical collection, but not, I feel, one that all proggers (or metalheads) should rush out to acquire as their very next purchase.

3/5

This album is the reason I check out progarchives every day.

I have been a passionate Steve Vai fan for as long as I can remember. When you put a guitar in his hands its no longer the same instrument as it would be in someone else's. The music he makes is in a different language, you can't really compare/translate it into someone else's musical language because the conjugations, phrasing and tenses are too incompatible. He approaches it in an entirely different way.

When I heard AAL for the first time, I was hearing the same alien aspect and it stirred the same response from me. This music is on a different level. Not just the guitar work of Abasi but the music as a whole. It incorporates the best aspects of several genres and manifests them into a new conglomerate that is unquestionably successful. They fearlessly attack an objective as ambitious as that and come through virtually unscathed. With that said, the music comes through as very impulsive (check Abasi's interviews on how he writes), and that always carries its own strengths and weaknesses. The repetition in themes and feeling is a valid critique and we can all just hope that one day we will look back on this album as the foothill at the base of a mountain.

Tosin Abasi is no Steve Vai, but his level of virtuosity, innovation and technical prodigiousness is on par. Vai plays with his heart where as Tosin plays more with his brain, but AAL does manage to convey real emotion, though mostly with melodic, harmonic and tonal tools. I can't wait for Tosin's own 'Passion and Warfare', if you will. The impact of jazz influence on new metal seems to be building traction. We are hearing it in the drummers, the guitarists and the composition. I think AAL really demonstrates the potential of where we can go from here.

Highights are 'Song of Solomon', 'Inamorata' and 'Tempting Time'.

In conclusion, this is paradigm shifting modern prog.

I was quite excited to receive this album. I had heard enormous amounts of praise for it and was told I'd like it for sure, since I'm a fan of great guitar playing, being a guitarist myself. The first track, "Tempting Time", floored me. This man, Tosin, sure knows his way around a guitar.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album wasn't the same for me. It got old really fast and the songs just seemed devoid of emotion and they didn't seem like much real care was put into them. Wasn't an easy album to make it through for me.

But whenever I listen to this album in parts, I love it. It's just as a whole this album fails to give me any enjoyment. Either way, I gotta say Tosin is one of the most talented guitarists I've heard in my life. Some may think he's a little too show-offy, but it doesn't bother me. It adds to the music I find. The riffs aren't half-bad either, but what have we come to expect from the djent genre?

All and all, it's worth a listen. But for a full all-in-one listen it really doesn't have much to offer. If you wanna check it out in pieces though, it's highly recommended.