AHLEUCHATISTAS

Existing primarily as a power trio, AHLEUCHATISTAS has released a total of nine albums since 2003 with this latest being EXPANSION. While Parish has been the only constant member from the start, the newest rotating cast of musicians includes drummer Danny Piechocki of various prog, punk and math rock bands such as Jitters, Nude Tayne, Terms, Throat Puncher and Zulu Wave. Also on board is bassist Trevor Dunn of Mr Bungle fame but of course he has ventured into way too many other projects to mention. Here's is yet one more.

Lying on the outskirts of the prog and punk world simultaneously, this underground act has been cranking out all-instrumental knotty avant-prog meets math rock and punk albums for quite some time now and on EXPANSION the band performs its strange musical concoction pretty much as usual. Knotty time signature rich guitar riffs dominate the soundscape while a bantering bass groove and jazzified drumming virtuosity creates the proper frenetic backdrop.

EXPANSION features another ten tracks of brutal prog splendor in all its unapologetic regalia. While brutal in terms of relentless time signature frenzies and unexpected hairpin turns into other riffing sessions, EXPANSION doesn't turn up the volume in the distortion department as do other similarly minded bands such as The Flying Luttenbachers or any Weasel Walter project for that matter. If you ask me i'd say that this band is more like a free-jazz trio that's happening to play on rock instruments.

More math rock than avant-prog, there is also a post-rock style of cyclical loops that are implemented and comparisons to the jittery manic freneticism of Captain Beefheart have also been made. For a trio, AHLEUCHATISTAS covers a lot of spectrum with each instrument pretty much crafting a complex counterpoint in relationship to the rest of the band. Unlike some skronky math rock avant-proggers, this band does employ melodic features albeit in a jazz-like abstract nature.

It took seven years between EXPANSION and the previous album "Arrebato" from 2015 when Parish embarked on the journey as a solo act but when the skronk is in you then you gotta find a way to let it out. EXPANSION scratches that itch. One could compare this album to 2022's "Desecration Of Form" from Deadly Orgone Radiation but while that band took the speed and distortion to extreme levels, AHLEUCHATISTAS' release of the same year can be thought of as the somewhat mellower counterpart with easier on the ears tones and timbres and at least some sense of assembly regarding the musical motifs generated by the individual players. Personally i find this a satisfying brutal prog release although it's an acquired taste for sure.

This instrumental band has become an underground brutal prog favorite for its jittery math rock frenzies that include elements of ethnic music, psychedelic rock, garage rock, minimalism, classical, electronica as well as pure unadulterated noise. The group is known for its knotty spastic deliveries of highly complex angular prog workouts and has found a fitting home on the Cuneiform Record label. Having released about eight albums so far, ON THE CULTURE INDUSTRY is the beginning and this debut emerged in 2002 however at this stage the band were on the Angura label.

Definitely one of those difficult listening type of prog bands that keeps panheads united, AHLEUCHATISTAS is known for a punishing parade of avant-prog processions laced with jazzy chord progressions, noisy guitar distortion, math rock jitteriness and transcendental psychedelic accoutrements. The main gist of ON THE CULTURE INDUSTRY, which is said to be the band's most accessible album as the stylistic approach would become even noisier and more brutal in its time signature bombast, is to display periods of knotty guitar fueled workouts the include jazzy drum rolls and heavy angular complexities and alternate with more contemplative comparatively easy listening segments that freely float in 4/4 timing and cast hypnotic spells that eventually get broken by the leap back into brutal prog antics.

To many who are not accustomed to this style of math rock fueled brutal avant-prog, this may all seem rather aimless and completely devoid of any purpose and in some ways that is the point really. AHLEUCHATISTAS is one of many such bands that have sprung up since the 90s that have found inspiration in the works by John Zorn and Naked City and taken things into much more extreme directions much like some modern metal bands have gone places Black Sabbath never dreamed. Starting with bands like Ruins in the 80s this Japanese inspired frenetic prog has really caught on with bands like AHLEUCHATISTAS expanding past the mere emphasis of brutality in the form of noise and time signature gymnastics but by also adding traditional jazz sounds as well as an arsenal of disparate tones and timbres that keep the music from becoming a one dimensional snooze-fest.

If you are into bands like The Flying Luttenbachers, Breadwinner, Happy Family or Altered States then AHLEUCHATISTAS will fit in your distorted world of brutal prog otherwise this is a style of prog that won't appeal to the crossover crowds that seek more sophisticated versions of pop hooks. This is certainly the kind of music that doesn't contain memorable hooks as it is a frenetic discordant jet-fueled rampage of math rock brutality and more subdued smooth jazz set into the context of post-rock. This is definitely not the kind of music you hum along with but rather get completely lost in as its unpredictability and complexities are the draw. Not a bad start for a band that continues to crank out new albums every few years. I like how the album alternates between the heavy distorted passages and the clean guitar jazzier ones. A more than decent debut album by this North Carolina band.

3.5 but rounded up

This is an instrumental odyssey into the unknown, and for many this will be a journey that they will not wish to embark upon, but if you have a need to expand your musical boundaries then this may be just the thing. Free jazz is just a starting point, and with obvious nods to Art Zoyd and Can they have brought together textures from all over the world. Ryan must be worn out at the end of each gig as his percussion rate is phenomenal, while Shane moves easily from fuzzed out droning guitars to single string attacks on an acoustic where I am amazed the he doesn't break strings with regularity given the ferocity and tempo. If he was playing chords instead of single notes and turned it up then this would give most thrash bands a run for their money. There is also a lot of Eastern influences at times, with some songs sounding almost Japanese in style.

Each song is very different, but to enjoy this leave your preconceptions of what music should sound like at the door and settle down to something that will challenge your ears. There won't be many who will relish playing this to be honest, but those who do will be richly rewarded. This is the first time I have heard the band and I have read that in the early days they sounded a bit more like Beefheart ? some further investigation is in order methinks. www.cuneiformrecords.com

This band had something good going on and established themselves as an exciting band on their previous albums. Love them or loathe them, but they were never boring. They created truly progressive rock with weird time signatures and melodies. Music that gave our brains a good work out. Challenging music.

Not any longer.

Ahleuchatistas has reverted back into a room full of dull electro stuff with some of their old time signatures included too. There are a lot of droning here too. This is not the Ahleuchatistas that challenged me on so many levels. Location Location is just a shadow of what Ahleuchatistas once was.

There are some good stuff here. Mostly when Ahleuchatistas visit their old haunts. A territory mainly ditched on this album. But this album is still a massive disappointment. I will revert back to playing their old albums and forget this one.

2 stars

Disharmonic is something that came later. On this album, they were still pretty harmonic and melody orientated. Yes, this band has also done pretty conventional melodies too. They abandoned this concept on their follow up albums though.

The basis of this album is jazz. Or more like guitar picking based jazz. Django Reinhardt type of jazz springs to mind on large parts of this album. But there is also a lot of post rock on this album. A genre I feel this band belongs in because they are not RIO/Avant Garde in the traditional sense of this term. Maybe this band is a post-progressive rock band.

This being their debut album and by far their most commercial accessible album, it is a very good album. It does not have this dense misantrophic disdain for melodies their other albums got. It also has some good melody lines, but is still pretty avant-garde. Or post-progressive if you want. I have given this album a frightening amount of time lately and I really likes what I hear.

A toss up between 3 and 4, but I ends up on four stars.

4 stars

Of The Body Prone saw two significant changes in Ahleuchatistas' sound; Shane Perlowin had cautiously started using effects pedals, and the music became rather more improvisational and open ended. These changes have come to full fruition on Location Location, and while there is still plenty to engage the listener it's a long way from the tightly composed and focussed music that came before it. It's essentially a series of ten sound collages on which it isn't always obvious whether a particular sound emanated from the guitar or the drums. In the absence of a bassist Shane Perlowin uses effects, in particular looping, to fill the gap, the results having audible elements of both Frippertronics and Fred Frith. All of which is fine and dandy, and it's good to see the band evolving and progressing, but the album would have been much stronger if at least a couple of tracks had been effects free guitar/drum pieces in the style of earlier work - Shane Perlowin is a remarkable guitarist but his excellent lead playing often either absent or buried between layers of sound. Similarly Ryan Oslance is capable of making Perlowin's compositions swing and the duo are capable of some breathtaking interplay - let's hope that we get to hear them doing what they do best on their next album.

If you enjoyed Of The Body Prone then Location Location is worth getting and persevering with. If you're a newcomer to Ahleuchatistas, start with one of the earlier albums. This is a perfectly decent contemporary avant rock album, but not a great addition to Ahleuchatistas' otherwise highly impressive discography.

The absence of any melodies and any obvious structures is the reasons for their lack of mass appeal. That again is the appeal of this band to me. It is nice to just be bombarded with weird times structures and random melody lines. This band is a very playful band and a truly avant-garde band.

Of The Body Prone is their next to most recent album. It has no obvious melodies, songs or any structures. It is also wholly instrumental, based on bass, drums and guitars. The first two tracks sets out their message though. Some intricate quirky signatures delivered with gusto. I find myself really enjoying this. The rest of the album is not of the same standard though. But I still really likes this album. It feels like a breath of fresh air in my world where I am focused on melody and time structures. Ahleuchatistas has a punk attitude to that and has discarded these notions. Besides of that; this album is an overall good album too. It is good to be confronted by albums like this and I regard Ahleuchatistas as an important band in our scene.

This is a good album and one more people should be confronted with. This is progressive rock in it's true sense.

3 stars

Ahleuchatistas underwent an abrupt change when drummer Sean Dail suddently quit just prior to a tour in 2008. The band put out an urgent request for a replacement and Ryan Oslance became their drummer, having only 4 days to rehearse the fearsomely complex music before a 3 week tour. Whether as a direct result of this altered line up or as a natural development, the first album by the reconfigured trio saw some significant changes.

The most immediate and obvious alteration is apparent on the first piece, 2/3 Consensus on the Un-Finite Possibilities. After 4 albums of extremely tight, mostly through composed pieces that rarely broke the 4 minute barrier, starting their 5th full length release with almost 9 minutes of dark, brooding semi improvisation is a clear signal that things have changed. The album ends on a similar note, with Map's Tattered Edges. On both pieces there is a concentration on creating an atmosphere before the trio lock together into impossibly tight formations and explore mathematical possibilities that would otherwise only occur to chess grand masters. In between there are eight pieces that explore more familiar territory, with the rapid fire stop/start/quick change dynamics that have become the trio's calling card. New boy Ryan Oslance actually swings, though, making the 'punk jazz' tag more apposite, and the sound has also been augmented by the use of a few effects on guitar and bass - there's even a brief sample tucked away in there. While they haven't exactly lightened up, there is a feeling that they now occasionally smile at each other between bouts of the intense concentration required to play music like this.

Ahleuchatistas didn't radically redefine themselves on this outing, so if you're already familiar with their work you'll definitely enjoy it, but they loosened up and expanded their sound without compromising their integrity. Recommended to fans of Captain Beefheart, King Crimson circa Thrakkattak, Ruins and avant prog power trios like Massacre.

I tend to enjoy the excursion, quick progression, sudden change elements that Ahleuchatistas predominantly works with so I am somewhat biased whilst stating my opinion, but this is a tremendous album and displays great talent from each of its three members. I am not in the least bit surprised to see this cd was released on the tzadik label as john zorn is quite eclectic in scooping up unheard of gems into his extensive repetoire. Onto the music!

At just under thirty minutes this album makes a statement, and does so in a very efficient manner. The music is very dissonant most of the time and can request a lot from the listener, but there is certainly its fair share of payoffs as well. In almost every track, the music will take an unexpected, yet interesting turn (in my opinion always for the better) which can keep the listener on their toes throughout the duration. This album just does not mess around, and is very exciting to listen to.

Each musician displays immense technical prowess, but does so in a way that compliments each other and has enough melody to make it seem like true art instead of someone grinding out scales to showboat. You can feel the emotions of the musicians permeating through the music and that, I believe, is a very powerful often times misunderstood feat.

This album never gets old for me, and I almost always listen to it all the way through because as I stated earlier it does such an amazing job of conveying the emotions through the music that just as soon as you feel like the album couldn't possibly sustain this amount of energy any longer, the album concludes and you walk away feeling fulfilled as a listener.

This music is not for beginners, and can be quite challenging at first. Fierce, aggressive, tight knit, energetic, emotional, dark with splashes of light. All of these words can be used to describe this effort from an extremely underrated outfit.

4.5 stars rounded up