BANTAM TO BEHEMOTH

Imagine if National Health, the Mothers of Invention, mid-1970s King Crimson and perhaps Magma were all in the same tour bus and they had a really nasty crash, and you were tasked with cobbling the bits together into a functional band. The resultant Frankenstein's monster of a group would probably still not sound quite as strange as Birds and Buildings, but you'd be most of the way there. Presenting an eclectic, heavy, and relentlessly fast-paced brand of avant-progressive rock on this debut album, the band bring a fresh and new approach to the jazzier end of RIO, and if I namedropped any more prog styles on here you'd probably think I was making this review up. But I'm not - they really do integrate all that different territory into a novel, coherent sound which makes this one of the most exciting prog debut albums of the past decade.