The prog-sludge band Scientist from Chicago released 'Barbelith' an album that every metal lover should hear. It has all the ingredients you need: heavy riffing, freaky solos, grungy vocals, a great variety of screams and a drummer with a fetish for drum fills.
Tracklist:
1. Chokhmah Binah
2. Magic Mirror
3. Barbelith
4. Fiction Suit
5. Retrogade
6. Shed This Meat
7. (Home) at Last
Scientist is, despite being a tearjerkingoff song from an unspecified English band, also a metal band and 'Barbelith' (named after the satellite with a consciousness from the comic The Invisibles) is their third album and it is simply genius. Their sludge metal sounds progressive, cinematic and I cannot understand why this band is not more popular among metal fans. The music is a combination of old Mastodon, with vocals that sound like Maynard from Tool and Layne and Jerry from Alice In Chains are having a gettogether: in the title track, 'Magic Mirror', 'Fiction Suit' and 'Shed This Meat' they gave me goosebumps. Everything that comes out of the mouth of Scientist is great, but what comes out of their hands is just as good: sludge riffs are interspersed with cinematic postrock and post-metal passages that are reminiscent of a long journey through a rocky landscape.
'Barbelith' reminded me of the day when I first heard 'Third Eye' from Tool, the afternoon when I put my burned CD of Mastodon's first album 'Remission' in my Discman, the night I secretly watched Rockzone on MTV and the video clip 'Them Bones' by Alice In Chains came on. All those memories are important because they have pushed me in a certain musical direction and Scientist has done that again. Year lists contender!
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