|
|
|
|
Absolutely brilliant, this masterpiece. The fact that it’s a debut, a one-man project, produced in a home studio and totally indie is all the more staggering. Mexico’s The Arkitecht is something of a pseudonym for one Genaro Ochoa, who also moonlights in death/thrash outfit War Kabinett, but it’s clear that this is his flagship, a towering achievement that might well be recognized as a genre classic several years hence. To call this an amalgamation of Porcupine Tree, Opeth, Pain of Salvation, Textures and Symphony X is both apt and selling it short, as it certainly draws influence from those musical forebears, yet never feels like it’s cribbing from any one of them. Sure, you have the electronic progginess of selection A, the pastoral moodiness of B, the fearless industrial-rap nuances of C, the death-prog aggressiveness of D and the busy guitar-keyboard interplay of E, but one would be hard-pressed to find an “a-ha!” moment on Hyperstructure that sounds remotely derivative. It’s simply too varied, too interesting and too inspired at any and all times.
For being an all-me affair, though, Hyperstructure manages to delegate or outsource more than his fair share of the tasks at hand, employing two singers, a lyricist, two illustrators (two illustrators!!), a guitar soloist, and two “drum consultants,” the latter presumably as a means of shoring up the fact that all of the rhythm section on this record is computer-derived. Honestly, I couldn’t tell, so well actualized are the crispness of the snare production and the roundness of the bass guitar. All parties involved work under the aegis of Mr. Ochoa himself, who performs all of those in some capacity as well, barring the vocals. If this album had ended after the preliminary seven-song cycle, a conceptual hodgepodge of themes inspired by the documentary Zeitgeist (good as a philosophical launching pad, but still pretty wacky at times... them’s my two cents’ worth), it would already rate as a top-notch work in my estimation. But then comes “Face Thief,” a 32-minute epic that tells yet another story, that of a serial killer who removes the faces of his victims for the sake of art rather than torture. This part harnesses certain elements of the previous album half, but imbues it with a logically cinematic tone: huge symphonic (well, synthesized) moments, three-act dramatic flair and a meaningful, calculated resolution. In doing so, Hyperstructure vaults far beyond the merely excellent into something mandatory and permanent in the terra cognita of the metal realm.
| Tracklist |
| 1. Blackout |
| 2. The Twenthieth Century Feast and the Millenium Hangover |
| 3. Through Broken Glass |
| 4. Elation |
| 5. Children of the Gods |
| 6. Hyperstructure |
| 7. Face Thief |
: 64:42
| Buy other The Arkitecht albums |
