BEHOLD... THE ARCTOPUS - Nano-Nucleonic Cyborg Summoning Ep

Three years after their previous Ep and just months ahead of the new Dysrhythmia album, the multifaceted Colin Marston picks the exclusively instrumental Behold... The Arctopus project back up (alongside pals Mike Lerner and Charlie Zeleny), expanding - sparingly, it must be said - the sinister, noisy metal-jazz universe inaugurated with the extraordinary "Arctopocalypse Now... Warmageddon Later" (Epicene Sound Systems, 2003).

The formula, however, is only superficially the same: Warr guitars (that terrifying 16-string instrument studded with skulls, also wielded during some Dysrhythmia live shows - not to be confused with the uranium guitar played by Lerner on the 2003 Ep), extreme prog-metal (with a dozen riffs chasing each other through dark atonal tunnels), violent hyperkinetic bursts in the Ephel Duath mold, and sudden melodic suspensions that are anything but accidental.

All of this packed into 17 minutes (against the 11 of the previous release) that, in the end, feel decidedly longer, with grim descents into the underworld marked by gusts of grindcore somewhere between Dillinger Escape Plan, Voivod and more "rational" outfits like The Locust and The Mass.

Behold's synthesis nevertheless proves the best way to compress into tight, encapsulated spaces a vast sonic arsenal that is often overflowing and uncontrollable, perhaps overly cryptic - haunted, that is, by the new post-metal rule that reduces everything to mammoth suites devoid of any pathos (see the latest Callisto).

The talented Mike Lerner, a session player for Killing Joke, takes centre stage in the opening moments of "Exospacial Psionic Aura". What strikes immediately, beyond his unquestionable technical skill, is the handling of pacing: Behold keep a firm grip on the reins of a monster (in this case a genetic one) perpetually on the verge of rebelling, of breaking the thousand chains that hold it back so it can sow terror and death across the cities of men.

By dictating, with extreme precision, sonic dynamics that are by turns gripping, powerful, breakneck, and at other times deeply emotional, almost soothing. The sound thus comes across as retractable, mutant-like (the final two minutes of "Exospacial Psionic Aura" serve as the intro to the following track), moving between daring phrasing and patterns that pay homage to Meshuggah.

A similar register runs through "Estrogen Pathogen Exchange Program", the Ep's centrepiece and perhaps its most accessible moment, where a messianic impulse leads into dark, surreal territories, reminiscent of certain sublime compositions by Sunn O))), before erupting into orgiastic metal-jazz digressions.

But there's no improvisation here, unlike on "Arctopocalypse Now": the impression is one of madness that is designed, lucid (the percussion in the finale), yet nonetheless effective and compelling, like an autonomous mechanism impossible to stop. The track's brevity, moreover, its brisk existence (which, much like a Lansdale story, will carry on beyond the ending its author intended), adds to its success.

"Nano-Nucleonic Cyborg Summoning" can be read as a furtive collection of snapshots from a world living on sudden tectonic shocks, suspended between the brutality of an untameable technology (the record's explicit artwork, the deliberately redundant pseudo-scientific allusions of the track titles) and an awareness of the human soul (the semi-acoustic passages).

To close, "Sensory Amusia" props up the schizoid arc, continuing the convulsive discourse of the opening track but with greater attention to melody, rhythmic slowdowns, and the ultimate distillation of a post-hardcore stripped of useless trappings.

Given the excellent material the band has produced so far, it's fair to wonder when Behold... The Arctopus will decide to test themselves over the long distance, risking the contamination of a nature shaped precisely by the unpredictability of the moment, by the temporal detachment that turns the present into the past, and the future into the present.

All that's left, then, is to put the record on repeat, aware and fortunate enough to glimpse only fragments of an unknown, Lovecraftian dimension which, if fully unveiled, would take us well beyond the abyss of madness - just like the unsuspecting tourists of Innsmouth.

N.B.: To mark the release of the EP, Metal Blade has put out a special edition that includes, alongside "Nano-Nucleonic Cyborg Summoning", a reissue of the band's previous album and a handful of live tracks.

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11/12/2006