Brooklyn's Behold... The Arctopus drop their Metal Blade full-length via Black Market Industries. The power trio, with its unusual instrumentation of drums, guitar, and Warr guitar (a 12-string instrument that offers, via the finger-tapping method, a full-stringed guitar and bass combined on the same neck), issued its first two EPs and a live set on Metal Blade in 2006, but in that regard, the band was still honing its sound. Here, it is fully fleshed, high-octane, all instrumental tech-prog metal with all the knottiness and timeshifts required. Certainly they are among the ranks of other acts that perform this super proficient music, like Psyopus and Dysrhythmia (Warr guitarist Colin Marston is a member) as well as Necrophagist and Meshuggah, but these cats take it a step further. Imagine the technical attack of early Voivod if Steve Vai or Mike Keneally had been their guitarist. There are no real riffs in this music -- more like long, intricate lines to be played off, one after another, with guitarist Mike Lerner leading the way, creating all of these labyrinthine patterns pummeled into overdrive by drummer Charlie Zeleny (who can play circles around any speed metal drummer anywhere and whose blastbeats are trademarks in themselves). Echoes of prog rock, jazz, and overdriven math rock are all present, but they don't add up to much until they are put through BTA's shredding blender in which everything comes off but the burrs.

1		Skullgrid
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