### Mare: Mare

#### 12/01/11 || Khlysty

Here in GD, not only what we say is the fucken law, but we got us some great forumers to boot. See, after Lumberjack pointed me towards the sickly death metal majesty that is Impetuous Ritual, another forumer, Duendemonio this time, PMed me ‘bout a Canadian band called Mare, which, a few years back, had an E.P. on Hydra Head. I remembered the label heaping lots of good words on Mare, and decided to check ‘em out. And, whaddya know? A huge record/book/electronics shop had the E.P. and, after buying it and carefully listening to it, I decreed that it was motherfucking good.

Mare formed around ex-The End’s vocalist Tyler Semrick-Palmateer, who had already impressed me with his work on “Transfer Trachea Reverberations To Point: False Omniscience”, The End’s first –and mostly incomprehensible- record. But, where The End took Dillinger Escape Plan’s hyper-complex song structures to a whole ‘nother plane of crazy, Mare seemed to move towards a more streamlined approach, mixing powerful doom/sludge metallisms with jazzy experimentalism, to create a very interesting, if sometimes jarring brew.

I’ve read older reviews comparing Mare with Kayo Dot and I can understand where these comparisons stem from: there’s an almost formal, chamber-music-like feel in the way Mare’s songs are composed and performed, while the band members sound capable of moving with extreme ease from crushing riffs to dark jazzy passages and complex song structures. Plus, the band adds cinematic passages (e.g. the intro of “They Sent You”) to their songs that seem to reference more modern classical music than anything metal. Generally, the songs’ development avoids linearity worse than a vampire avoids sunlight, which makes the music as head-scratchingly complex as possible.

But, Mare makes sure that, even during its most convoluted and seemingly unapproachable, there’s always some hook in the music that the listener might be able to hold on from. The riffs contain enough melodicism so that they don’t become totally pushback-y and impenetrable and the vocals easily jump from tortured post-hardcore screaming to subdued melodic –almost cool jazz- singing. Bottom line, of course, is that this here little E.P., while sure to estrange 90% of true-blue metalheadz, will have great appeal to the remaining 10% of listeners who can stomach genre-bending music, painstakingly composed and powerfully performed. I really don’t know if Mare still exists, but this here record is testimonial of great talent, folks.

- Information
- Released: 2004
- Label: Hydra Head Records
- Website: none
- Band
- Tyler Semrick-Palmateer: vocals, guitar
- Scot: bass
- Caleb: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Anisette
- 02. They sent you
- 03. Tropics
- 04. Palaces
- 05. Sun for miles