PELAGIC
Musicality and mayhem from the jazz/black metal borderlands
All the members of this St. Louis-based prog-metal behemoth are professional jazz/session musicians or music teachers by day. Mechanical Fiction sees the quartet playing on the heavy side of life in opposition to the gentility of their day jobs and other creative endeavours. The album hosts insightful melodic richness in Remnants Of Grief and Beneath The Crust, and sinister, complex angularity in Synapse Misfire and Earthly Decay, all beyond the extreme music pale. These work in conjunction with some out-of-bounds rhythmic patterning on Presence, which possesses a ridiculously jazzy shuffle yet avoids detrimental self-indulgence and flash. If anything, the wonder is just how much Mechanical Fiction could have blown the ramparts off. ■■■■■■■■■■