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Atheist: Jupiter

03/12/10 || Altmer

“Hi guys. We’re Atheist. We’re a band consisting of old farts, but since nice guy deluxe Roger Patterson died we released like one album and then sort of broke up. It’s been 800 years but we decided we’d come back, record some noise, call it an album and give it to the world again, since everyone is clamoring for The New Atheist Album.“

You guessed it, Atheist are back with an album called “Jupiter”. Now, here’s the thing. Some reunions work (though usually they are more like hiatuses) and some reunions are… retardo cash cows for people that have lots of money already. No, I’m not naming anyone. You can figure out yourself what I’m trying to get at here. Now, I like Atheist. Any self-respecting tech metal fan should, since back in the days of “Unquestionable Presence” this band were virtually unstoppable. But I was never sure whether this reunion without Mr. Patterson (obviously, since he’s left the realms of the living and is hopefully out terrorizing the Catholic masses like a zombie somewhere) is a good idea.

Turns out it wasn’t a bad idea. It sounds like the Atheist we all know and love, but with much better production values, and worse vocals. In fact, Shaefer sounds like the bastard child of Chuck S. and any of the guys from Mastodon. I am not so sure that is a Good Thing. While I am not entirely sold on those vocals, the music is undeniably skilled. Angular riffs, powerful thrashing sections with harsh double bass, jazzy weirdo sections and off-kilter rhythms collide and that’s pretty much the Atheist as we all know it. It’s death metal for aficionados of good musicianship. I think we can all agree that isn’t a bad thing.

Songs, though? Not that many. The album’s only half an hour long, and there’s only eight songs. I think that is a sensible decision since this is some motherfucking chaotic music and it sounds like you’re being cannon-balled around a flipper machine for half an hour when you’re listening to it. Furthermore, thanks to all this flippering around there’s not much in the way of verse-chorus-verse style writing. In fact any actual songs are hard to distinguish from one another. A couple plays through and only the intro to the first song really sticks. That doesn’t say too much for an album now does it.

There are some really neat touches though: the cello on “Live and Live Again” is a really neat way of introducing the song. In fact, the word I’d use for this album is “professional”. It’s professionally amazing, with expert technical musical skill, excellent production, and vigour. It’s just a pity the vocals and songwriting bring it down a bit because that means this is indeed not as good as “Unquestionable Presence”.

What it comes down to: I like this album quite a bit, but I still think their reunion isn’t that much value for all the years they’ve been gone. It doesn’t sound like they’re gonna sound more than “pretty good” every time out. Their style is just too cluttered and crazy for that. When it comes to technical metal madness in the Florida style, I think I’ll take Cynic and Death over this band. However, with all the skill and intensity involved, there’s no denying it’s a good album – it just doesn’t speak to me like some other albums of this ilk do.

Recommendation: Make Kelly work on his vocals. That’s probably the only musical drawback to this lot.

Information
Released: 2010
Label: Season of Mist
Website: www.atheistmusic.com
Band
Kelly Shaefer: vocals, guitars
Chris Baker: guitars
Jonathan Thompson: guitars, bass
Steve Flynn: drums

Tracklist
01. Second to Sun
02. Fictitious Glide
03. Fraudulent Cloth
04. Live and Live Again
05. Faux King Christ
06. Tortoise the Titan
07. When the Beast
08. Third Person

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