NEXT LIFE
ALEC CHILLINGWORTH
Guru Meditation FYSISK FORMAT
Eight-bit mayhem from Norway’s End Of Level Bosses.
Blip. Bloop. Next Life pretty much invented the video game/metal hybrid, and two decades later, they’re still making naff little noises sound cutting-edge. Album four, is a technicolour explosion of 8-bit synth and polyrhythmic brutality; Prophecy Come True and The Beyond Perception’s stop-start percussive blasts display a similar disregard for metre as The Dillinger Escape Plan. Given it’s just 28 minutes, the album provides enough experimentation and sonic flex to keep things not just interesting, but essential. Dexterity II’s drawn out keys are genuinely heartbreaking, but then you’re thrown straight into Apocalypse 19’s boss-level tempo. Guru Meditation trains you to bench-press cattle. It jacks you up so much, it completely obscures the fact that the record’s second half is bereft of spasmodic, hardcore freak-outs; that the final three songs are a gradual wind-down; that it’s entirely instrumental. Bewilderingly brilliant.