The fifth studio album by Chicago art metal band Yakuza is their debut for the Canadian label Profound Lore, home to many other acts with a more expansive vision of heavy music than that of their peers on, say, Roadrunner. Minsk bassist Sanford Parker produced Of Seismic Consequence (he also worked on Yakuza's 2007 album Transmutations), giving it a full, organic sound that suits the band's thrashy yet psychedelic music. Opening track The Ant People is a drifting, wordless (but not instrumental) intro, which leads into the furious Thinning the Herd, on which Bruce Lamont's vocals are somewhere between a croon and a chant; the harsh death metal barking he's used on earlier discs is almost gone at this point. On the third track, Stones and Bones, he unleashes his secret weapon, the saxophone, adding a Hawkwind-ish element to the song's Tool-meets-Brutal Truth roar. Toward the album's midpoint, the tracks get longer, with the eight-minute Be That as It May followed by the 11-minute Farewell to the Flesh. Both tracks are mellow, with occasional surges and plenty of reverberant guitar chords. Testing the Water is probably the album's most saxophone-dominated track, while Good Riddance (Knuckle Walkers) and The Great War are short blasts of punky aggression, the latter track featuring bursts of distorted shouting. When the album concludes with the slowly building Deluge, the ultimate impression is of a band that's finally found its voice and is ready to take listeners on a journey that mirrors the human mind -- frequently introspective, but just as frequently given to flashes of blind fury. ~ Phil Freeman, Rovi

1		The Ant People
2		Thinning the Herd
3		Stones and Bones
4		Be That As It May
5		Farewell to the Flesh
6		Testing the Waters
7		Good Riddance (Knuckle Walkers)
8		The Great War
9		Deluge

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