Unorthodox Creative Criteria

During the first minute of spinning this disc, you could be very easily confused into thinking that you've accidentally stumbled upon an unreleased Meshuggah track. Seriously the opener "Crippled Tracker" has all the ingredients to be a lost track of Chaosphere with its pummelling rhythms and overflowing fusion leads towards the end. It's only 0:51 into the second song (“The Inborn Mechanics”) where you realize "Oh these guys are much more on the melodic and fusion side that I initially thought" with the simmering lead and tasteful bass breaks exploding into the solo finale leading into a exhilarating set of melodic technical riffs. Allan Holdsworth would be proud for sure. For fusion fans, take note; there are many more such delights on this song and the album! Even the drumming on this song and "Neutralized" is just phenomenal. Ridiculously groovy and fucking tight as hell.

The last two songs, especially the last one are when the band really showcases their jazz/progressive side in full force. There are even dissonant saxophone swells in the beginning of “Motion”…sweet!! With its ethereal solos and warmth bass tones ending off with a superb bass solo towards the end, this song definitely wouldn’t be out of place on a McLaughlin or Holdsworth disc of the 70s for sure. The mindbogglingly complex fills and drumming only adds to the thrill of listening to this track. “Wavelength” is hands down one of the best songs on the album starting off on a crawling note shifting into a spell-binding picking sequence at 0:46 only to kickback into groovy brutality at 1:27 hereafter choosing to seesaw between the heavy and soft sections to great effect with multiple bass licks to boot. The melodic breakdown towards the end only reaffirms the fact that this is one of the best bands you’ve never even heard of.

As innumerable people have already pointed out, yes their fusion interludes are pure Cynic worship, but on in a rip-off sense, but being the perfect cocktail of soothing ambient music and spiralling jazz swirling in the giant melting pot of multiple influences from all across the board. A real ethereal joy to listen to, provided you have an open mind plus most of them are a tasteful blend of the heavy/fast sections along with the slower ambient sections. Some of the bonus tracks like “Glimpses” almost play out like the OST of a dramatic murder mystery film. Yeah to be honest with you, that’s the exact picture that it painted in my mind. The dual vocals and gang shouts on ""Hostile Silent Raptures" make an already brutal and melodic song even more fun to headbang your ass off to. Watch out for the mind-melting polyrhythms out there. The spell-binding solo that kicks in at 3:32 is truly out of this world. No wankery folks, the guitarist has clearly studied the fusion masters well. Easily one of the best songs on the album. If you're hesitant about checking out the whole album, sample this song first and then see how you feel.

Although I should warn you, if you have come here only looking for a blistering tech-death fix, you'll probably be immensely bored and put-off by the fusion interludes, but on the other hand, if you are looking for a varied treat for the senses on both the tech-death and the jazz-fusion side, you'll feel right at home out here. Even those who find Meshuggah's music to be too excessively brutal and wish that they would expand on their fusion side into a more melodic template, this album is probably your perfect cup of tea. Just keep one thing in mind, diversity is the name of the game here.

Absolutely fascinating stuff.

Coprofago is a 4 piece outfit from Chile, that plays technical death / post-thrash metal. After gaining some sort of success and small but dedicated fan base with the band’s second release “Genesis”. Two years after that solid effort they have come up with a worthy successor in form of the album, “Unorthodox Creative Criteria”, released by the band’s new record label, “Galy Records”.

For people who have not heard this band, they metal very closely influenced and much in the vein of music by bands like Meshuggah and Cynic. However, what overshadows this is a huge wave of originality, which helps them, maintain a separate identity rather than that of a garage cover band. Dripping with jazz influences, extremely technical song structures, utmost mastery of their respective instruments and a truckload of power, this band is a force to be reckoned with.

The vocals, handled by Pablo Avarez, are basically screams and are very similar to that of Jens Kidman of Meshuggah. They however are not as powerfully screamed out as those of Jens’ and that is a good thing because Jens’ vocals have always been a turnoff and a sensible reason not to like Meshuggah. Pablo’s vocals on the other hand are tuned perfectly for the band and suit them perfectly well.

The guitar work, which is handled with Pablo and Sebastian Vergara, is very technical with riffs of various magnitudes and wavelengths. Expansive yet melodic and technicality makes for a combination, which is not acquired by many and may seems as a dauntingly and unimaginably tough skill to acquire, and yet they play this technique masterfully.

In a band that is filled with people of immense talent, it is tough to match up to them, leave alone stand out. But this is exactly what drummer Marcelo Ruiz has done. His amazing flexibility, speed, technique and skill to show that he has played the drums in the same league as his progenitors whether he plays technical death or jazz-fusion is truly amazing and has won me over. His ability to play in one rhythm on one hand and a completely different one at another is something not many can boast of.

As for the album, tracks like “Crippled Ticker”, “The Inborn Mechanics”, “Neutralized”, and “Holy Silent Raptures” are riddled with groovy off-time rhythms, a technical overdose that is placed perfectly at the thin line that divides playing technically and instrument wanking, jazzy influenced song structures with the rare jazz interludes, roaring vocals and the occasional guitar solo that is technically proficient and perfect. So much the band has grown in confidence and ability, and their sheer disregard for the conventionally accepted makes me fall in love with their music. “Fractures” on the other hand is a mid-tempo track, with a lot of thrash influence in it.

However, this track has 13 tracks and those 6 are the only that fall in that description. The remaining tracks are jazz-fusion ones that are near complete instrumentals and this reeks of their Cynic influence. Most of these tracks are jazz metal, others aren’t even metal. Though at times boring and at times exceptional, the choice to cover the majority of the album with jazz-fusion/rock instrumentals severely misbalances this release. This is my only complaint with this album. One may pick up this release with the intention of hearing technical death as I did, but may turn out with something else all together. These tracks would have been much better if a shorter version of some of them were added in between tracks under the pretext of jazz interludes.

This band has a ton of talent and has the potential to back it up. Better choices and song structuring may well be the only reason they haven’t made it big in today’s metal generation. However if you are looking for not a completely original, yet a rare breed of technical metal then this is worth definitely checking provided you accept that more than half of the stuff on this album is NOT technical metal.

I'm not going to fool myself, or attempt to fool anybody else out there - it's quite obvious that Cynic and Meshuggah are objects of worship for Coprofago. They have studied these bands into the ground and ripped them off blatantly and severely. However, they have done it so beautifully and perfectly that I really don't give a damn. Coprofago have done such a wonderful job of infusing both of those bands into a fresh and captivating sound that I simply cannot bring myself to reprimand them.

Firstly, the riffs are ripped straight from Destroy Erase Improve - displaying a highly angular, rhythmically irregular, start-stop staccato style; and the guitar tone is essentially a clear cut adaptation of the deep, bottom-heavy sound found on Catch Thirty-Three. The drumming, while not exactly performed with the cyborg-like accuracy and timing of Haake, is reminiscent of the "machine apocalypse backed by fluid jazz soundscapes" style from DEI. Occasionally, drummer Marcelo Ruiz will also wander to one extreme or another - throwing out speedy blast beats or dropping the metal completely and engaging in full out fusion. The vocals are a direct replica of Jens Kidman, atonal roaring and cryptic lyricism and everything - no exaggeration whatsoever on my part. If you have ever heard a Meshuggah album, you know exactly what the vocals here are like. Furthermore, the guitar leads have Fredrik Thordendal written all over them, fusing swirling metal with Holdsworth-esque legato work.

They've also completely adopted Cynic's bass presence and fluid transformations from metallic bursts of technicality to peaceful stretches of serenity. Fretless bass solos come around occasionally, as do interludes where the bass moves from a rhythmic pulsing to intricate melodic interactions. Also in the vein of Cynic, background ambience and atmosphere drip from this music.

"The Inborn Mechanics" shows all of these things in full force - from the Meshuggah-esque rhythmic motifs and riffs that introduce the song, to the smooth fretless bass solo and gentle cymbal/snare work that follows, and on to the rather epic sounding conclusion of rolling drums and atmospheric guitars. "Neutralized" sees frequent use of rather insane blast beats and a sense of aggression that seems to have carried over from Coprofago's last album, Genesis. "Isolated Through Multiplicity" is full on jazz fusion with only a moderately overdriven guitar sound to remind you that you are indeed still listening to a metal band. "Glimpses" is an odd ambient track with nothing but violins, violas, and cellos. The last two tracks, "Motion" and "Wavelength" are the two longest songs on here and feature what are probably the most accomplished displays of what the remainder of the album had been hinting at for the past 35 minutes.

The production has its ups and downs. The general sound is full, warm, and well-defined... but the drums sound over-produced; almost triggered at times. Overall, it's a vast improvement over the fuzzy production values that plagued Genesis.

Check this album out if you're a fan of Meshuggah and Cynic, or even the jazz-metal thing in general. You will likely view it as a godsend.

I am not shitting you, Coprofago are for real. Their mix of death/jazz we have experienced through Cynic,Death and Atheist (to mention only the forefathers....) has come to an unexplicable length, thus creating this marvelous self-clashing amusing album. Everything about this creation oozes guts and originality.

First of all, the cover is a simple logo, nothing undeciphrable (hey! there is nothing wrong with that). And the artwork is up to human interpretation, completely abstract. The first time i saw it, obviously i thought it was a spider upside down (wtf?!). Now that i see it, i imagine it is a view of a landscape with some twists here and there. Second the tracklisting, can you believe the album is 13 tracks, of which 4 are bonus tracks, but they are settled on almost the middle of the album, you must be wondering who the fucks wants to hear subpar material on the middle of the album? This is where it becomes interesting....this are all jazz based instrumentals!!! They work incredibly well with the flow of the album.

Second the lyrics, OHHH those fucking lyrics.
"A disguised command,
under the form of choice,
it generates the illusion of freewill"

taken from track 1 - Crippled Tracker

It is weird to see such insightful (and pretentious) lyrics, but considering the fully enriched songwriting, it is expectable, it shows the completely utterly absorbing effort of the band to put not an album, but a top notch bust my ass off album. And consider that it took them 5 years to release this album, it shows.

The production is completely overwhelming, the drumming sounds very organic, the guitars are delightfully crisp and resonant, the solos being TOTALLY out of the jazz/tech death school i am salivating as i type this and listen. The dual vocals, one is completely (new)Darkane worship, the other less used (on this album, on older albums it is a more balanced vocal attack) its a death growl common in the technical death subgenre. The bass is completely audible, with even some solos, and finally the synths are there but in a very subtle fashion, something that has made me appreciate more the album and the atmosphere portrayed by the band. Finally the middle instrumentals have some saxophones and jazzy elements very dreamy stuff.

In conclusion i dont want to get so much involved into the specs of every song, i am just positively hoping that this review has awaken a curiosity towards this album, because as i stated in my title, this honestly beats EVERYTHING out there from Southamerica, the Caribbeans and Central America (including all those delightful Goregrind mexican bands....yes i love them seriously...) and i cannot specify how even non-metalhead people who ive copied this album to, have told me how much respect they have gotten for the scene with the magnificent creativity on display here.

"As we are dropped from this life
manifest of will towards release
mechanic sights of truth.
A new setup for what is now on coming
set your senses to recognize what's going to be
replaced one way changes coming soon
hopeless, reckless... just set your senses still"

I couldnt fucking agree more!
MANDATORY!