By Jonny Bakes
Just like there’s more than one way to skin a cat (apparently), there’s also more than one way to record an album as a group of well-established musicians proved when they came together as Intercepting Pattern and began to work on their debut album ‘The Encounter’. Instead of following a traditional structured approach to recording, these progressive metal anomalies opted for a more improvisational approach to form an album that promises to get the old grey matter functioning.
The band consists of members who you may know from some of their other projects, such as Defeated Sanity, Infecting the Swarm and Cerebric Turmoil. But the piece of music that has been created here is a little different to any of those in that it is created as one free-flowing piece that crosses many different genres to give a fairly unique experience. Although the album was subsequently split out into ten tracks, it’s not something I would recommend dipping in and out of as it would be a little bit jarring. You really need to set aside half an hour of your day to just try and get your head around ‘The Encounter’.
There’s clearly a wide range of inspiration that has been drawn up on to create this album, there’s heavy djent-like sections, gentle astral sounding synth passages and some fantastic syncopation going on. It’s really quite a technical piece of music, which if that isn’t your thing might feel a little disorientating at times, particularly as it switches from one style to another. But what it does show is that every member of the band is a very talented musician and it feels like this could have been recording in just one long jam session with them making material up on the spot (although I doubt that was the case).
There is one song that stood out from the rest that appears at the tail end of the album – ‘Asmodeus’. Whether this stands out for the right reasons, I’ll let you decide, but I will start with a simple phrase, “prog metal alarm clock”. That’s the first thing that came to mind when I heard this as there’s a recurrent guitar riff that sounds very much like a radio alarm buzzer that is a prominent feature of the song. Somehow by using this it gives the song a sense of urgency, perhaps this is because it taps into that deep-seated dread of getting up for work in the morning? But layered on top of this is some pretty insane jazzy syncopated grooves that really appeal to the drummer in me whilst also reminding me I’m out of practice! Throw in some groovy basslines and off-tempo keys work and it binds together into an early morning musician’s wake up call.
Overall, this is a pretty impressive piece of music, but it does seem to be targeted at quite a niche demographic. If you’re into the likes of Meshuggah, Cynic and Coprofago then this is likely to be up your street too. However, if you like your music to be slightly less brain-engaging then this is unlikely to be for you. For me, I certainly enjoyed this and I was blown away by all of the musicianship that it showcased but at the same time it’s unlikely to be something that I will be listening to on a regular basis.
- ‘The Encounter’ is released on Friday (4 September). You can get your copy HERE.
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