Overrated, but good nonetheless

When I heard the hype surrounding the band. I decided to download this album on a whim and see if it's all that. Overall, it's definitely a fresh breath of air from the mediocre scene of bands today. Abasi is perhaps one of the most skilled guitarists I've heard in the last decade as he pulls off some tapping trick and fast solos along with some nice atmosphere in the music that give me almost the impression of space. The drums here are also impressive and shows influences on Meshugga's complex time changes. Despite all that, there feels times where the music tends to tread water at some points such as in Behaving Badly or Soraya. Sometimes, there's riffs being used again and again like in On Impulse and his playing tends to get a bit wanky such as in CAFO. However, it still stands above today's boring trite stuff. 7/10

Great Album

Great skills and good musicianship of these guys makes this album a must have and one you recommend to others. One thing though...production...hm...I just wish it was better. That's for me only disappointing thing about this album. Comparatively speaking to many other metal bands or even prog-metal or tech-metal or math-metal (how ever you prefer to call them) it's not how it should be. Low frequencies are somehow muffled and bass guitar, drums and even electric guitar in some parts seem to hit same frequencies and you don't get that clarity that you've expect. But, I'm just being picky maybe. Still good and must have.

And now for something completely different…at least for fans of Washington, D.C., metalcore also-rans Reflux, whose rather ignominious demise after just one critically acclaimed but poor-selling LP wound up freeing resident guitar virtuoso Tosin Abasi to accept an offer from Prosthetic Records to deliver his first solo album. That album, like the pseudonym adopted to mask the ostensible solo nature of Abasi’s new project, was Animals as Leaders, and it proceeded to showcase the guitarist’s formidable mastery of his instrument through a wholly instrumental, daringly progressive, and, perhaps most surprisingly, oftentimes mellow and ambiently new agey collection of songs. Of course, Abasi’s heavy metal proving ground inevitably takes charge on more aggressive, maniacally intense workouts like “Tempting Time,” “Thoroughly at Home,” and “CAFO” — all of which make reference to extreme explorers like Cynic and Meshuggah. But kinder ruminations like “Soraya,” “On Impulse,” and “Point to Point” take a different approach by weaving cascading melodies and fleet-fingered tapping (somewhere between Joe Satriani and two-hand-tap trailblazer Stanley Jordan) out of his customized seven- and eight-string guitars. Meanwhile, overt electronics are kept to a bare minimum aside from the programmed drums and occasional electronic hiccups (“On Impulse”), fluttering synth patterns (“Song of Solomon”), and overdriven synthetic percussion runs (“The Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing”) that flare across listeners’ panoramic widescreen. And on another surprising tip, the oddly named “Modern Meat” (Frank Zappa fans just perked up!) actually boasts gentle, mildly bossa nova-ish acoustic melodies. Having praised all that, the album’s endless parade of circular scales and sheer barrage of flickered notes (epitomized by the dizzying “Behaving Badly”) may prove just a bit tiresome to less adventurous musical tourists, but for those looking for sounds that both awe and challenge their faculties, Animals as Leaders delivers quite the cerebral workout. – Eduardo Rivadavia