You there. I see it in your face. In the shitty cutup Voivod tank and throwback hightops you’re rocking. You’re sick of all the lullaby post metal, the dudes with pseudonyms running around forests, the endlessly microscopic labeling and infinite subcategorization, aren’t you? What you want need is a heaping, healthy dosage of thrash rife with furious riffwork, time-space continuum altering solos, and cheesy scifi-apocalypse themed subject matter, isn’t it?
Of-fucking-course it is, and Vektor’s recently released Outer Isolation is about to melt your face off. The Tempe, AZ four piece play a breakneck style of science fiction-drenched techthrash that’s as talented and enjoyable as it is goofy. The guys really have a knack for tying space-noise ambient passages, delicate clean interludes, frenzied lead guitar work, and astral robopocaylptic conspiracy theories together into a maddening roller coaster ride through the cosmos that remains interesting throughout its duration. Join us on Isolation’s progressive thrash space adventure as we see how many more scifi adjectives I can jam into this review after the jump!
Outer Isolation comes two years after Vektor’s 2009 debut Black Future which, coupled with a string of successful demos, semi regular shows throughout both their arid Arizonan home and the desolate suburban landscapes of Southern California, garnered the group a fair bit of attention. Isolation is familiar Vektor territory, albeit territory well worth exploring. The album begins with (and in several places is punctuated by) a soft intro that sticks around just long enough to build anticipation for the blistering tremolo picked chords and licks and frontman Dave DiSanto’s distinctive vocals. The dude’s definitely got an interesting singing style, managing to walk an occasionally blurred line between shrieks and growls that wouldn’t sound out of place on a fuzzy black metal record and higher pitched ‘space falcon’ Halford-esque screams that occasionally find bleed their way into DiSanto’s hoarse rasps. The approach is odd but is quite fitting for the destroyed futuristic planetscapes this album weaves its way in and out of.
After a brief bit of setup in track ‘Cosmic Cortex’, Isolation tears into three of the best songs the record has to offer at such a frantic pace, I didn’t quite distinguish them from one another my first two playthroughs. ‘Echoless Chamber’ and ‘Dying World’ are sonic thrillers capable of standing toe-to-toe with the best songs on Black Future, but fourth track ‘Tetrastructural Minds’ is the gold in this offering. The song first appeared on the 2006 demo Demolition, and Isolation’s rerecording really manages to make this searingly fast journey into the limitations of human perception of time and reality shine.
Although the band does occasionally follow more traditional song structure that leads up to the various dueling solo sections of the album, a few of the tracks here will catch you completely offguard with over-the-top solos that fly in from left field. You will smile and relish in their excessiveness, and perhaps that is one of Outer Isolation’s great strengths: it knows how to have a good time. Without a message or a backing ideology to worry, propagate, or care about, Vektor has managed to rediscover this foreign concept about music being fun to listen to. Isolation is a hightech highspeed blast, the perfect weedleweedle guitar fix for both thrash junkie and newcomers alike. SciFi or Die, indeed.
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