Blotted Science is always one of those groups that’s going to fly under the radar due to the lack of a vocalist. No matter how great you play or who the members of your band are, it’s difficult to truly make a name for yourself when people can’t sing (squeal or grunt) along to your tunes. But as is the case with bands like Karma to Burn and Stinking Lizaveta, it seems like they were made to be music only. Blotted Science also falls into that category.
Unlike the other two bands I mentioned, Blotted Science is a creature unto itself. Formed by guitarist Ron Jarzombek to focus on his progressive and technical side and brought together as a whole by drummer Hannes Grossman and Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster, Blotted Science is tech-metal to the extreme.
The first name that comes to mind when I think of technical metal is of course Meshuggah. Although there’s a different tone here, the polyrhythmic nature of their music is similar. There’s one huge difference between the groups though. Blotted Science make listenable music. That’s a little harsh on Meshuggah as I did like Obzen quite a bit, but the majority of their music is brutally hard to get into. With The Animations of Entomology though you get time signatures that very few human beings could ever recreate, fantastic complex drumming, remarkably creative bass work and moments of prog-rock that certainly help digest the chaotic sounds of the record. And not that Webster had anything to prove but for those that think Cannibal Corpse’s brutal death metal is simply all about speed and no other skill, he certainly proves that notion wrong here.
The real key to the album for me is that it’s only four tracks (or seven depending on how you look at it) long. It’s a 25-minute record with the 4-part 9-minute final track being the longest of the disc. That’s key because while their 2007 debut – The Machinations of Dementia – was pretty fantastic itself, the only real drawback was that it’s totally hard to focus on nearly 60 minutes of chaos especially since both these records are meant to be listened to in their entirety, not piecemeal. Twenty-five minutes is really perfect. You get all the great technical elements and the ability to digest it before your brain turns to mush. And while it’s hard to honestly talk about a theme on an instrumental composition, songs like “Ingesting Blattaria” and “Vermicular Asphyxiation” actually do seem to fit as I can totally picture this being the soundtrack to worms choking me to death.
Cockroaches and human barbeques notwithstanding, The Animations of Entomology is technically perfect and is a fantastic album for anyone that likes progressive or technical metal or simply wants to be challenged by their listening experience.
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