By Raymond Westland
One of the most exciting projects of this year is Metallic Taste Of Blood. The name may not sound familiar, but it does contain some of the most talented musicians from the prog, jazz, avant-garde and experimental music spheres, including Colin Edwin (Porcupine Tree), Balasz Pandi (Merzbow, Obake) and Eraldo Bernocchi (Winter Garden, Obake). Let’s see what their self-titled debut album has to offer.
Putting together a couple of virtuosic players in a single group can either lead to total self-indulgent mayhem or something truly mind blowing. With Metallic Taste Of Blood it’s luckily the latter case. The album is an entirely instrumental affair where jazz, industrial, dub, progressive rock, avant-garde and a whole arsenal of other styles meet each other in such an effluent way it’s intimidating and mesmerising the same time. Jamie Saft’s (Masada, New Zion Trio) brilliant keyboard parts gives the music a haunting avant-garde freestyle jazz style. It may be unsettling at first, but his parts give this album it’s edge.
Other key feature is the band’s ability to present an incredible array of ideas within relatively compact songs, thus enhancing the album’s overall accessibility. The members in Metallic Taste Of Blood also restrain themselves from engaging into endless solo spots, a cardinal sin that make many other progressive rock and metal outfits unbearably bloated and pompous. Compositions like “Sectile”, “Glass Chewer”, “Maladaptive” and “King Cockroach” are shining examples of this.
Production-wise there’s nothing to complain about this album. The overall sound is clear, but it’s fortunately not too polished. This strengthens the brooding and frightening undercurrent that makes the music so addictive.
If you crave intelligent, forward thinking, original and downright unsettling music than the self-titled effort by Metallic Taste Of Blood should satisfy your every need. This is sheer musical bliss. Utterly breathtaking!
(Rarenoise Records)
