While You Were Sleeping, the World Changed in an Instant
While you might expect yet another clichéd take of breakdown reliant deathcore based on the band name, label and overly dramatic album title, the fact is, once you discover The Plasmarifle hail from arguably the tech metal capital of the world, Montreal, feature former Neuraxis vocalist Maynard Moore and a familiarly tight mastering effort from Yannick St-Amand (Kataklysm, Despised Icon, etc), you get a deeper sense of what to expect. And it still doesn’t prepare you….
Culling from their innate geographical tech metal genes, The Plasmarifle have elements of Despised Icon, Beneath the Massacre, Neuraxis and Gorguts contained in their tumultuous, complex brutality, and while you could lazily construe this as deathcore, the fact is as with so many of these bands (i.e. The Faceless) they could be technical death metal or modern grindcore also.
Squealing, scattershot blast beats and shuddering time changes, jazzy, spazzy spurts, dual screams and deep bellows and a sense of borderline histrionic atmospheres and song titles make While You Were Sleeping a largely unpredictable beast and a difficult listen akin to Cephalic Carnage mixed with The Dillinger Escape Plan and Canadian bands listed above on 30 minute LSD trip. The band shifts from stuttering tech metal (“For All That Is Concealed Shall Soon Be Revealed”), oddball punk/hardcore vocals mixed with almost blackened fury (“As The Mountains Rolled Back I Stood In Disbelief…”), trumpet laced jazz chaos (“To Those That May Be Concerned”)- and that’s just the album’s first three songs!
A couple of quirky interludes break up the album’s mid point, mind melting trio of “Exhaling Life As Ink On A Page”, “From The Trail Of Ashes…” and “Hold You Close To My Heart/This Is Not An Emo Song”, but they do little to curtail the albums often jarring structures and off putting prose as more often than not the band’s obsession with complexity and chaos overrides any momentum of heft (i.e.”Hold You Close To My Heart/This Is Not An Emo Song”, “Starlight, Starbright”) though closer “Haunted by the Ghost of a Dead Actress” settles down for a menacing, end note to the album, displaying what this band is truly capable of.
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if this is better than their ep I might have to check it out. I dunno I kinda felt like all those songs were just other Canadian bands thrown in a blender with extra emphasis on breakdowns. Hopefully this is an improvement
on Nov 19th, 2008 at 17:50Another band that needs to take a full course in songwriting. Or maybe it’s just too avant-garde for me. Not a single memorable song on the entire album.
on Nov 20th, 2008 at 10:40weedly weedly chun chun
on Nov 20th, 2008 at 13:13Got this, need to listen to it more, waiting on the Red Shore CD now.
on Nov 20th, 2008 at 17:21Hey sandwiches, that’s my favorite riff :P
on Nov 20th, 2008 at 19:14whens the new red shore album come out.
on Nov 20th, 2008 at 20:14Ya’ll should listen to a band called Oceano, man they are heavy.
on Nov 20th, 2008 at 20:15Oceano? New one for me. Red Shore CD is out now, I should have got it this week but they sent me a Rose Funeral CD by mistake ;(
on Nov 21st, 2008 at 15:42