Take flavors of Between the Buried and Me, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Frank Zappa, and Skith, toss them with some of your favorite dressing, and the new dish called What's He Building In There? is what you will have for dinner. This self titled debut is extreme progressive metal, complete with technical arrangements, screaming vocals, catchy melodies, wild jazz passages, and plenty of bone crunching metal riffs & rhythms. This Ontario five piece pull out all the stops on these ten tracks, mixing in crushing technical metal with free form jazzy sax on "Citizen of the City", pounding metalcore on the brutal "A Walk On the Beach", Latin rhythms amidst plenty of histrionic & bombastic prog metal on "Armadillo", and flat out sick time & tempo changes on the manic "(Holy Shit) The Droid is Missing". The vocals of Chris Schroeder are all over the map, as he hurls and spews no shortage of death growls, high pitched classic metal shrieks, metalcore shouts, and clean melodic passages at the lister from every conceivable angle. " I, Xolotl" is one of the more progressive tunes of the bunch, featuring some intensity that rivals Lamb of God, but channeled through a complex focus not unlike vintage Death, Cynic, or Pestilence, and "Monkey Knife Fight" sees guitarists Chris Cookson & David Halk weaving some inhumanly intricate lines around each other while drummer Liam Epps and bassist Hal Jaques pump up the funky, almost fusiony grooves. At the end of this one, you'll want to take a deep breath and try to summarize all that you just took in, but your best bet is to hit replay and experience it all over again. Fans of technical & extreme progressive metal should eat this platter right up. What's He Building In There? is without a doubt a band to watch...
Track Listing
1. Black Scythe Affair
2. Citizen of the City
3. A Walk on the Beach
4. Armadillo
5. Armageddon
6. (Holy Shit) The Droid is Missing
7. I, Xolotl
8. Monkey Knife Fight
9. Windmills
10. Avian Taxi
Printer Friendly Page
Send to a Friend
