Towns that change their name and a horn of plenty

The thing about metal, right, the thing is that there are like a bajillion billion different kinds of genres, and whereas some you can kinda figure out what they sound like, others you go like 'ok?'.

And the - probably - stupidest name ever to grace a metal genre is... Djent. What? Djent. Bless you. No, no, I'm serious - I AM FUCKING SERIOUS - Djent. Where can I begin if not where this started?

Meshuggah - 'Chaosphere' 

I can't think about this band without thinking about a guy I used to know over thirty years ago. Late 80s/early 90s and I'm getting into increasingly forms of extreme metal, and there's this bunch of guys and gals I get to know through not only my then best friend as well as my mother's son. One of these guys is an older guy - I can't tell now how much older, maybe a couple of years more, maybe a bit more - and eventually he opens up his own record store - selling, you guessed it, metal records. Sometimes I'd run into him on the bus, and we'd talk a bit. So this'd be, I dunno, mid-to-late '95 and on one such occasion where we ran into each other, we start talking about what we're listening to. And I mention something - can't remember what - but something that to this guy sounded so inanely stupid or childish that he just gets a look on his face - you know the one, where you scrunch up your face, and you sort of tilt your head backwards and shake it in sheer disbelief of the idiocy that just soiled your ears, and he says 'I don't listen to that shit, I only listen to stuff like 'Meshuggah', and I instantly hated them.

Fast forward decades and I listen to 'Chaosphere', an album many regard as a masterpiece. 

Many, yes. But not me. This was bad beyond belief. An atrocity that defies description. So bad that the only that I can recall from this piece of shit is that it ends in - quite probably - the worst piece of muzak I have ever had the displeasure of listening to. Could only deserve a 0/10

Animals As Leaders - 'Parrhesia' 

It was through Rick Beato's YouTube channel that I got to know just how amazing a guitarist Tosin Abasi is. But I've never felt that urge to go and listen to his band. Of course, now it's as good a time as any. And boy - this is good - very, very good. BUT - it's got a very big problem. Two, in fact. I well and truly disliked the drums sound, it sounded way too tinny. Not tiny, tinny. And even worse? The bass sounds horrible. I'll give it a great 7.5/10

Periphery - 'A Pale White Dot'

Godddamn, talk about a missed opportunity here. When I first started thinking about this bit of the run, how could I not go for their 'Periphery V: Djent Is Not a Genre' album? Motherfuckers only went and released a new album after that one. So first thing I got was how this one starts almost like a black-metal record - blast beats, wicked riffs, and those scratchy screams... I loved it. But then there's a shift in the voices - it becomes clean and sort and whiny, maybe a bit too whiny at times. And then there are melodic bits that could've just come from a gothic metal thingy with a buxom lass singing. Pretty good, it deserves a 7/10

 

Tesseract 'War Of Being' 

Dull. Boring beyond belief. 1/10 

Volumes  - 'Mirror Touch'

I can't remember a single note from this record, but I remember feeling mightily pissed off after I'd listened to it because it made me feel like I'd just wasted forty minutes of my life. 1/10

Vildhjarta - '+ Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +' (Yes, plus signs and all) 

By far, the best listen of the week. I didn't like all of it, but what I did like, I enjoyed immensely. Clean and harsh vocals, sometimes reminding me of Solefald and latter day Enslaved, with the odd quiet bit here and there reminiscent of something by The XX. A throroughly deserved 8/10

Scale The Summit - 'Subjects'

So apparently this is an all instrumental band, and the album I picked was the first one to have vocalists on it. All different on each song, and some singers I liked, some I didn't. I found this to be just OK - nothing special, but neither did I find it to be offensive on the ear. It's a 6/10

So what the fuck is Djent, anyway? I have no idea, and I'm pretty sure I delved all I'm ever going to into this here topic.