Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 20/01/2017
Label: Season of Mist
A less
conservative approach to progressive tinted death metal, they pepper their
songs with plenty of other musical flavourings. From the avant garde shredding
on ‘Jove’, to the turbo charged, time signature metamorphosis assault of ‘Sum’,
each track flaunts its own distinctive character. So if the likes of Animals As
Leaders, Death, Obscura and Cynic appeal to you, then prepare for your taste
buds to be tantalised.
“Śūnyatā” CD//DD//LP track
listing:
1). Gaia
2). Benzaiten
3). Jove
4). Sum
5). Elpis
6). Paradise
7). Samsara
The Review:
“Instrumental
music,”
this record’s accompanying press release concludes, “traditionally has a
harder time in metal as in other genres. All too often, virtuoso musicians have
used their talent mainly to stroke already massive egos. Yet bands like Animals As Leaders have demonstrated that
ambitious skills and passionate song-writing can be fused into something
greater, which appeals far beyond the grudging respect of colleagues.”
Indeed,
while Vipassi drag their instrumental
music down more deathly, but ultimately bewildering complex hallows reminiscent
of Animals As Leaders – who have also
featured in this column – that band has been helping people consider the genre
of late. The band’s surging popularity is contradictory to what makes the
charts, of both mainstream and metallic varieties, and as a result is opening
the door of opportunity to bands like Vipassi.
The
band was born from jam sessions in 2009 between guitarist Ben Boyle and members
of Australia’s
Ne Obliviscaris – drummer Dan
Presland, bassist Brendan Brown and guitarist Benjamin Baret. Soon, as the press
release goes on to say, they “settled on an instrumental style that captured
the openness aimed for to allow any listener to interpret and connect with the
material subjectively. Their project represents a desire to explore beauty and
darkness in all its shades, through melodic and complex compositions”.
Just
like how the bass driven sounds of Obscura
are treading on the turf Death once
carved out as their own, continuing their legacy in a heavy but imaginative
manner, Vipassi too are carrying the
torch. A less conservative approach to progressive tinted death metal – and
Chuck Schuldiner was anything but conservative – they pepper their songs with
plenty of other musical flavourings. From the avant garde shredding on ‘Jove’,
to the turbo charged, time signature metamorphosis assault of ‘Sum’,
each track flaunts its own distinctive character.
Like
Obscura too, the bass is powerfully
prevalent. Brendan Brown’s playing refuses to just steady the ship, it can fly
off the handle at any conceivable moment, meandering like a lost child in a
supermarket, but played with an impressive conviction, grace and musicality
belying of its disregard of convention. He is there secret weapon.
Where
a singer may add interest and that all-important record selling earworm, here
they don’t so much as compensate for their lack of vocals by shifting time
signatures every which way as they do utilise the void therein. Their venomous
songs have many twists in their tails; they can pirouette on a knife edge, flip
upside or segue from primitive passages to ones of airy, chilling calm. The
change comes as sudden, but never feels anything but smooth.
Listen
with headphones and these compositions become wholly, terrifyingly immersive. ‘Elpis’
is one such example. Above all an interloping song, something like this belongs
more on a film score than it does a death metal album, but its skin crawling
aesthetics stand strong; it gives the album a hellish death.
It
leads you blindly into the closing track ‘Samsara’ which best
merges their thundering metal, with guitars and bass tightly syncopated and
resembling the sound of alien warfare, with hypnotic and creepy atmospherics.
They weave in and out of the battle, sewing a vast and extravagant canvas.
Something
about the music of Animals As Leaders
pierces through the threshold from underground music to something more
entertaining, rewarding and accessible – even if its complexity is anything
but. Vipassi however, don’t come
across as a band who can attain such contradictory achievements. But what they
do is extremely appealing, so if the likes of Animals
As Leaders, Death, Obscura and Cynic
appeal to you, then prepare for your taste buds to be tantalised.
Śūnyatā is available here
