Album Review: SteelSwarm - Aspects of Dissonance (2020)
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| Picture Credit: SteelSwarm |
The music on "Aspects of Dissonance" is rough, smooth, dynamic, complex, and catchy at the same time. Hard to grasp what SteelSwarm exactly did, but it is amazing. Shifted beats and dynamic drumming creates a complex carpet on which the sound is founded. Jamie's bass picking is sheer astonishing. The bass lines often make a major amount of the beats while Zac is playing chequered fills beneath it - a structure that reminds me of Tool's "10,000 Days". Atop of the sophisticatedly raging drums and the high-speed funky picking of the bass, Dane's guitar flies like a shooting star, creating huge soundscapes that go from Jazz over Prog Rock and Djent to harsh Thrash Metal. Riffs, soli and leads slide into each other with great ease.
'Future Gods' (video above), my personal favourite track from the album paradigmatically shows off the huge variety SteelSwarm work with on their first album. The intelligent arrangements let rough and thrashy parts merge into 70s style clean Prog and mix it with glitchy, scratching noises from the Synthies. Dane's vocals rise above this heavy, smooth and versatile soundscape with mostly clean and sometimes shouted vocals. Although the presence of the vocals, it often appears as if the musical background seems to be the more important part of SteelSwarm's songs.
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| Picture Credit: SteelSwarm |
Intelligent and yet heavy music. If you love artists such as The Hirsch Effekt, Orange Utan or Finte, you will be very happy with SteelSwarm's output. Prog's not dead! Math Rock isn't either.
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