Skullgrid

Technicality in metal can often be met with hostility as many claim it detracts from actual riffs or catchiness of the songs. Behold The Arctopus is what happens when the concept of technicality is stretched to it's very limits. Because of this, the band has a bit of a bad reputation throughout the music world. The band was infamously named "the worst band in the world" in a popular YouTube video and has been criticized endlessly for the "lack of feeling" in their music. This group seemingly throws away every hint of musicality in favor of showing off their skills... Or so you think. While about as far from accessible as music could possibly be, Behold The Arctopus carefully crafted every element of this album to alienate as many people as possible, but reward those who stuck around to give it a second chance.

The album starts off with the unending whirl of 16th notes and tuplets that is the title track, Skullgrid, before diving headfirst into the shining star of the album, Canada. I may be biased, having listened to this song more times than the number of brain cells I have, but this is truly one of the finest works of avant-garde music I've ever heard. At first it might just sound like 3 people playing completely different songs, like most everything on this album will on first listen, but upon deeper inspection the song can be, at times, quite catchy and definitely displays a real mastery not only of their instruments, but of unconventional songwriting as well. This point is really driven in throughout the album.

The album features very predominantly, the chaotic, harsh chromatic solos of Mike Lerner, which is likely the main turn off point for people on this album. To those not well versed in the sound of the band, the solos may sound childish, but they add a level of dissonance to the sound of the album that is honestly quite hard to reach without trying. Countering the very harsh playing of Lerner, Colin Marston "holds down" the low end with his signature Warr Guitar, playing highly dissonant counter melodies underneath of Lerner creating their trademark polyrhythmic sound. One thing you absolutely cannot deny is the insane skill of drummer Charlie Zeleny who crushes even the most difficult of patterns here, playing in sync with Marston throughout most of the album with his unending double bass, complete arm autonomy and constant fills, he drives the band in an odd way throughout this album.

Though most well known for their blisteringly fast and polyrhythmic sections, the band often employs clean or atmospheric sections in the music that really show off their diversity as writers. Canada, for example features the still very polyrhythmic clean section, featuring only Colin and Lerner, with more conventional progressive metal writing before bursting back into their signature sound. The closing track, Transient Exuberance features a quite long noise break in the middle of the track as well that somehow melds perfectly into the track before jumping back into a solo featuring Jordan Rudess of all people, from Dream Theater, on guitar.

Overall, Skullgrid is a rough listen for those unprepared for it. It's a deadly mix of progressive death metal and free jazz/fusion in a way that still has not only stayed unmatched, but not even attempted by any other group, to my knowledge. Possibly because I'm the only weirdo who loves it to death, possibly because no other group of musicians could pull it off as well as BTA, but one thing is for sure, the sparse material they release is fantastic and this is the shining jewel of their discography. I would recommend everyone listen to this at least once just to hear what true neglect of all constructs of music can sound like, but also because it's so good at what it does. Truly a one of a kind band and an album more than worthy of it's spot in metal's history, but not of it's infamy.

95/100

The premise of Behold... The Arctopus is simple: one guitar, one Warr guitar, drums. Three dudes playing inconceivably technical metal without regard to conventional songwriting or melody. Everything about Skullgrid is unforgivingly mechanical. The main purpose of the brazenly clinical and loud as fuck production seems to be merely to show just how flawlessly each musician can play their ridiculously composed and extremely demanding stuff.

It's easy to hate Skullgrid for those very reasons. I'll even go ahead admit it right now; the two shortest tracks on the album, the title track and Of Cursed Womb, suck. They're chaotic in all the wrong ways, and more or less feel like a dog trying to chase its own tail. They're simply pointless. An album filled with tracks like these two would probably be utter shit.

However, the rest of the album is nothing like those two tracks. Instead, the other five are always exciting, and are all very different from one another while still constantly pushing the boundaries of spastic tech metal. Canada immediately demonstrates the impeccably tight counterpoint forged between guitarist Mike Lerner and Warr guitarist Colin Marston during its hypnotic jazz intermission, while You Are Number Six is a grimy dirge that slowly but surely explodes into an unbridled frenzy. Some Mist is a more haunting number centred around lingering arpeggios that quite accurately conjure an image of a noxious mist, while underneath all that Marston is just going crazy on his Warr, eventually escalating in complexity. On Scepters, drummer Charlie Zeleny settles for a laid-back, swaggering pace, and Marston provides a constant stream of notes for Lerner to solo over. It's arguably the most traditional song out of the bunch, but it's no less engaging than the rest.

The closing track, Transient Exuberance, is easily the most varied one on Skullgrid. It begins with a frantic burst of seemingly random notes in perfect sync with the drums (akin to something Spastic Ink would do), before proceeding to flirt with frantic thrash gallops, swirling ambient passages and nasty grooves. It finally culminates in a majestic atonal sweep of sorts (I have no idea what Lerner is doing in that bit, to be honest, but I'll just assume it's a sweep) which provides a dizzying but strangely fitting sense of closure to the album, ending it just as abruptly as it started.

On Skullgrid, Behold... The Arctopus have proven that they are more than just three guys skilled at their instruments. They've matured as a band, creating their own brand of tech metal, something robotic and sterile, yet also visceral and intense. It's not a perfect album, but it's an extremely impressive one, especially for a debut. A must have for fans of wacky, out-there progressive metal.

I don't get it ... why would people want to listen to three billion random, incoherent notes played in a single minute? That’s exactly what Skullgrid is. They are acclaimed for 'pushing the boundaries of technical metal' so I decided to check this out. I should have taken that sentence a little more literarily. You know the typical technical band that gets famous because they can play ridiculously fast and complex music? You know how some of them get called 'wankers' because their music just doesn't seem to have any purpose other than to show how technically skilled they are?

Well, these guys take that sort of stuff to a whole new level. That's not to say I don't like technical music. To the contrary: I enjoy a lot of bands that people hate because they are labeled technical. This is a different case. I think the recording process went something like this: somebody presses record and Behold... The Arctopus start playing random notes for a couple of minutes. As fast as they can, without any sense for rhythm or coherence. They stop playing, press stop and there you go. Another song finished for the new album.

An occasional fragment that reminded me of death metal, except that metal is generally structured. The drums often provide incredibly high blast beats and other drumming patterns often found in death metal. Sometimes you can also distinguish a standard jazz fill. All the rest is pure randomness: apparently the drummer tries to hit as many things with his hands and foots as possible, not caring about whether he's accompanying the guitarist well or not. The guitars are even more chaotic, not caring about riffs or scales or progressions or whatever. What they did is trying to play as many notes as possible in as little time as possible. Sometimes the music will slow down and just when it seems that the song is getting some direction, everything is ruined when guitarist Marston starts playing random notes again.

While I definitely acknowledge how technical these guys are able to play (hence a rating higher than 0), this album just makes no sense whatsoever. I’m giving them a 56 because they have huge potential, lots of talent and tried something new. A couple of seconds are enjoyable, though nothing more than that. How they manage to play this live remains a mystery to me. The answer is that they probably do the same as they did on the recording process: start improvising as fast as possible, thus leaving the listener no time to remember anything about it (other than the fact that these guys sure know how to play fast). If you are wanting to hear three billion notes a minutes, you should get this album. If not, don’t bother with it.

... I just don't get it.

…is the best way I can think of to describe this band’s style. Skullgrid shares some of the manic, unpredictable energy that Zorn brings to his music but it nonetheless avoids straying into noise; rather, Behold… the Arctopus focus on experimentation within a progressive format. The result is an album that sounds like the best of experimental jazz. The band experiments with dissonance, harmony, counterpoint, and time signature changes in a similar fashion to free jazz artists. Consequently, this is an album that demands close, analytical attention. However, this album is carefully arranged, not improvised. What might, at a passing glance, seem completely disorganized and unintelligible in this album is actually very well structured.

The success of the album is in its songwriting, which stretches harmonies and melodies to their maximum capacity. Paradoxically, in order to create the impression of chaos, the band has arranged its music incredibly carefully – riffs are altered constantly, but maintain enough characteristics for a sense of continuity. The band explores the melodic possibilities of every riff that they write, using the different sounds and feelings to create rapidly changing moods and atmospheres. This makes for challenging but rewarding listening; appreciating the album requires much more attention than most albums do but that only makes the album more rewarding. Beware, however, playing this album “in the background” lest doom befall you!

Obviously, the album is walking a fine line and it doesn’t always work. At times, such as on the intro track, the band throws too much experimentation into a melody too quickly. The result is that the melody isn’t adequately developed; it doesn’t sound like music at all. Fortunately, the vast majority of the album is understandable as, thankfully, the band slows the pace down considerably after the intro. This allows ideas to progress rather than collide. Of course, there are still plenty of aggressively fast-paced progressions. Listening to those passages certainly requires more attention than the vast majority of music but they can, for the most part, be understood and appreciated.

As you’d probably expect from a technical band, the musicianship and production are impeccable. There are few, if any, mistakes and no sloppy play to be found on the album. Every note and hit is unbelievably distinct. Clarity is vital for the success of the album as it makes the album’s structure readily discernible, without which its experimentally dissonant harmonies and myriad counterpoints would just sound dissonant. Indeed, if it weren’t for how unbelievably clean and tight the band is, the guitars would probably just sound as though they were out of tune.

Skullgrid’s biggest weakness is that the bass is absent throughout much of the album. Without it, the band sounds overly self-indulgent. Ironically, adding more bass to all of the songs without changing the instrumentation and lineup would probably have required making the already ridiculous Warr guitar parts even more complicated. This leads me to believe that the band really should find a bassist, if only to make their sound heavier. If the moments on this album with bass are any indication, Behold… the Arctopus can certainly write some heavy music.

Admittedly, though, heaviness isn’t really the point. On Skullgrid, Behold… the Arctopus explores the boundaries of music in a way few metal bands have ever even thought about exploring them. By exploring complex, jarring arrangements, the band manages to create the musical equivalent of the visual arts’ bizarre optical illusions. Skullgrid demands to be appreciated in a similar way to optical illusions; the experience, while jarring, is beautiful nonetheless and provides a new perspective on music. I highly recommend it to anyone who can survive (or skip) the title track and who sees metal as more than just a particularly aggressive, riff-based form of popular music.

Highlights: “Canada,” “Some Mist,” and “Scepters.”

I remember listening to the 2005 EP by Behold ... The Arctopus, and I'm not sure if I ever found it particularly attractive. Though I remember what the band was like - when you hear this band, you don't forget it.

To make as accurate an analogy as possible, it's like Mickey Mouse opened up a music theory book in Fantasia, and dumped out every term, every scale, every phrasing, every time signature, and every style, tossed a dozen of the most technical death and progressive metal albums you've ever heard on top of that, and gave it to Japan's top sushi chef to slice, dice, roll and cut as he see fit. And yes, in the magical world of Fantasia, that makes sense.

However, there is one hole in my analogy, and that is this: there is no doubt that I have a profound adoration of sushi. My feeling for this are a great deal harder to pin down.

In all seriousness, this is the most sporadic music my ears have ever been subject to. And practically speaking, this doesn't really fit many definitions of music in the first place.

I am not a fan of things mathy or technical. But technical death metal is one thing, this is a arctopus of a different color.

There are no vocals, no big deal, right? Right. Until you realize that there aren't riffs, there is zero discernable structure or parts, there is zero repetition of anything played, tempos come and go without even the slightest break between them. Then the absence of vocals contribute to this being an absolutely amorphous mess. Even to say this changes rhythms like the wind, wouldn't be accurate, because to establish a rhythm you have to play a set sequence, so the band can't really change rhythms if they never had one. It's more like a song-length sequence of randomly scattered notes. What's worse is the album actually crosses over into all out avant-garde and ambient at times, which as expected, holds the same lack of direction or form, with even less tonality.

There are some moment that are just awesome sounding, sometimes it's almost like weird doom metal, sometimes it's like free form jazz with heavily distorted electric guitars. But most of the time, it's just not so awesome. And it seldom even achieves something that we take for granted in 99.999% of music, and that is having a set feel, direction or emotion. It's just that random.

Being this unconventional would be great if they managed to make even 20 seconds of the music be memorable to me. Who would listen to this? Other than for novelty's sake, and that's the only reason I even investigated the album at all. That people actually would sit down and listen to this on a remotely regular basis is just as mind boggling and nonsensical as the music itself.

Conclusion: Hugely dynamic, and the zenith of erratic, unpredictable music, these guys show they have more than enough ideas to be a truly exceptional progressive metal band, but instead waste their time producing music to have a seizure to. With their level of sporadic unpredictability comes the complete lack of memorability. Please avoid this unless you are a huge tech head. And if you are - enjoy your sushi.