If you were to place headphones on the statue of the thinking man, what would be playing in his Discman? What could possibly throw a man into an eternal state of thought? This is the album. Only an album this temporal, this right brained, this eternal could extract such a state of mind. Indeed, only an album of this magnitude could defy the logic of time and float on the very edge of madness without turning into total pretentious garbage.

To say this album is simplistic is an understatement; simply amazing is a better term. Riffs and patterns are repeated endlessly, shifting the brain into a right brain mode and inducing a trance-like state. This allows the listener to shift out of normal space and time and into a netherworld of warped perception and illusion. Breaking up the trance are the shredded throat vocals, not enough to break the trance, yet enough to stimulate emotion in the cauldron. These vile screeches are the harbingers of some deeper pain, connecting on a subconscious level, appealing to that inner nihilism that every person has. In truth, this whole aural experience is a total evisceration of a madman's soul, stretched into long epics that seduce me to tears.

Each track, individual, yet separate, is a piece of a larger whole; each piece works toward the experience of the whole. It climaxes in a long, contemplative keyboard track. This is an album of sight, but not sight outward; sight inward. It asks the listener to ignore the outside world and look in, for we are mirrors of the outer world, twisted and warped, yet perceived differently to sustain sanity. And this album, in it's total disregard for control, asks to change one's perception and leave sanity for the weak minded; sanity is merely a barrier to true freedom, and this album offers just a taste of it.

© 1998 grotesque