GENETICS / EX DIANETICS

The band consist of Jay Orr on Bass, Luke Spies on Drums, Shane Leadbeater on Guitars and Samuel Joseph also on Guitars. There is a guest solo by Simon Dawes on The Chandrasekhar Limit. The guitar sound reminds me of King Crimson on Larks Tongues in Aspic. The riff is fractured and is accompanied by a frenetic lead break with string bends and speed picking beautifully played here. There are also some passages of duel lead harmonies that soar in wonderful resonance. The percussion has some grooving hi hat work and the bass lines are well executed. This is definitely my pick of best track on the album.

The album is primarily instrumental and guitar driven with a distinct progressive metal sound. There are some jazz elements such as on Kin when the metal riffs cease and a beautiful section with jazz guitar and percussion is heard.

The album opens with Pale Light with a spoken intonation by Carl Sagan about the demonstration of the folly of human conceit that is the distant image of our tiny world. The lead guitar dominates the track as it does the whole album and is enhanced by strong rhythmic bass and drum and some keyboards. The atmosphere on this track is rather tranquil despite the wall of sound. It captures a beautiful dreamy feel that the spoken sections interpret for us as deep cosmic contemplations.

Episteme has a jazzed up rhythm that switches signature a few times. The main melody is the lead guitar punctuated by outbursts of drum and bass. The vocals speak about what is the point of Science and making something work does not make it right. Art forces us to reassess our place in the cosmos and art and literature does that. Yes, this is some heavy thinking.

Samsara has a solid rhythm and howling lead guitar breaks that make it one of the heaviest tracks on Cynosure. The spoken section speaks of how kids treat the subject of Science. Quite amusing and so true. Then later we hear a lecture on the atoms that make up the universe. I will leave that to you to ascertain the meaning of this as it is rather deep and reflective. The music switches to metal riffs and then a spacier keyboard to close it.

The tempos shift dramatically from fast to slow and steady on tracks such as Mephisto's Lullaby that opens with crunching distorted guitar with an odd time signature. Then suddenly sweeps into glissando strings before breaking out on a hyper tempo punctuated by the drum beat. It locks into soaring guitar melodies and spoken vocal intonations are heard about bigotry and racial prejudice. It has a political tone speaking of the pigmentation of the skin that has nothing to do with the person inside, and I can concur with this thought. It is followed by a frenetic lead break played with passion and zeal.

Entheogen has a jazzy tempo and guitar with some spoken words that sound like someone having a discussion about types of music. The guitar on this is sublime accompanying the jazz rhythmic percussion. This track stands out among the rest as it is so unique in style, more like Carlos Santana.

Bijuu closes the album with a quiet free form jazz style, subtle in its structure and builds in tempo with an off kilter rhythmic guitar. The lead guitar begins to shred into pieces the serenity for a while with very fast picking, and then it breaks into an ambient sound. A myriad of guitar styles permeate the track with fast sweeping arpeggios to slow bends. The spoken section speaks of how the world is, but it stops suddenly and the album is over.

The instrumental sections are often augmented by the spoken word sections that at least give the album an overall conceptual feel and maintain added interest. I like how the words concise a melting pot of ideas about the perils of man amidst the triumphs of Science. This is a contemplative album that is empowered by outstanding musicianship. The lead breaks on this are stunning at times and showcase a tight structure. For those who love their instrumental albums guitar heavy and injected with jazz fusion Adrenalin - Cynosure is one album worth checking out

From the outlay, I am probably the least into instrumental metal music fan that there could be given the fact that I'm a musician myself. Usually there is not enough to take the role of the vocalist and it often sounds like a song written to have vocals with those tracks muted - this is not the case for Genetics. The potential risks of the typical djent riff here, Milton cleans there, post rock banality in the middle simply does not apply and thankfully so. I feel like that is the musical equivalent of overloading on sugar, while this is sometimes a good thing - too much leads to diabetes (read: diabeetus).

The premise of the album is described aptly and concisely by the album title, 'Cognitive Dissonance' outlines the concept of not being able to holding multiple views that are at competition or contradiction to your currently held views despite how true they possibly could be. This is applied and rather magically applied to the concept of religion through the use of sound bites and excerpts of famous/infamous religious and public figures sharing their spiritual gems of great pertinence. The approach is not heavy handed, rather subtle and balanced which allows you to make your own conclusion theologically, perhaps influenced by one's own cognitive dissonance - layers of meta abound.

One thing that I didn't think would happen is such a discovery period of all these sound excerpts following my probably 50 listens of this album. I have searched for each of these clips and researched who made these sometimes wild, often eloquent claims and I feel like it has developed me as a person despite not being a poster boy for piety in any way, shape or form. There is something magical and cathartic about this record in that way.

I don't want to minimise the musical significance of the record with all this philosophical foreshadowing, as the performances and approach of this record is close to impeccable for a debut with delightfully delicate clean tones that lull you into the verge between focus and rest, to tastefully crafted melodic explorations including from guests John Luna and Mitch Coull.

This is a truly progressive metal album, not a proper noun "Prog Metal" album which has spiraled into a self parody of regression for the most part - the dynamics and harmonic structures of 'Purposely Blind' and 'Body Thetans' are enough to reaffirm and ignite an interest in instrumental rock for me.

Whilst songs like 'Proliferate' may on first listen appear slightly more generic in nature, they offer an element of light and shade to the album which shake you up out of any more relaxed/pedestrian sections with jarring and energising guitar leads and groovy rhythms.

My favourite track 'Man Made Utopia' is reminiscent of 'The Perfect Element' era Pain of Salvation with a modernised touch and perhaps some of the most powerful arrangement lifts that I've heard in the last year. This is an impassioned piece brought to an apex by the personally most affecting spoken word sections from Stephen Fry. The reprise of melodic themes throughout the song despite the varying textures is particularly enjoyable.

The lead guitar work is actually very refreshing from the often guitar solo free or Periphery clone tap leads I always hear nowadays. With a few improvements to the finnesse especially on the vibratos, these will be 2 guitarists coming to rock the boat and shake things up and I for one am glad to be along for the journey.

The production is of a great quality especially for a self produced debut and I feel that this element will develop with time to have the second release from this group of Sydney composers being rather astonishing. There is a slight overuse of high end and a few problem spots in the guitars but this is only minor and does not detract from the varied presentation of blended genre work.

One of my top picks for the year so far - a splendid blend of jazzy elements, alternative rock textures, post rock and metal textures.

Standout tracks: Man Made Utopia, Purposely Blind, Cognitive Dissonance

8.75/10