Atheist

Just over half an hour. That's all it took Atheist in 1991 to seize the nascent death metal scene — at the time among the most brutal and uncompromising frontiers of the rock galaxy — and reveal its unsuspected potential for eclecticism and technical refinement.

"Unquestionable Presence" is the second LP from the Florida quartet. Back then, the band was made up of musicians barely into their twenties, and with that record they proposed an unprecedented marriage of thrash riffs, growled vocals and dazzling fusion about-turns. Today, the album is regarded as a cornerstone of the technical death metal and progressive death metal strains, and is cited as a key milestone in the development and progressive-ization of extreme metal. But the reasons to listen to it, and listen to it again (even several times in a row, given its short length), go far beyond historical considerations. Despite more than thirty years of further evolution, the synthesis achieved on "Unquestionable Presence" still has the power to lead you into a universe all its own, where chaos and order interpenetrate and savagery presents itself as the flip side of transcendence.

Opening with an ascending tritone — the "devil's interval", emblem of symmetry and dissonance — "Mother Man" is the record's first track. You're immediately hurled into the maelstrom of phrasing that forms the core of the whole album. Furious drumming, riffs bouncing between the bass and the two guitars, and above all a whirlwind of tempo changes and stop'n'go moments. In just the first thirty seconds, the time signature jumps back and forth twelve times between 5/4, 3/4, 11/8, 10/8 and finally 4/4. Over a thrash barrage of palm-muted notes comes the voice of singer and guitarist Kelly Shaefer, an angry snarl that lacks the cavernous echo of many later death metal vocalists, but rather recalls (risking a bold comparison) the raspy timbre of Brian Johnson. Every element seems locked into place, the track reaches its blazing solo and heads toward yet another whirl of riffs and rhythmic shifts... when suddenly, out of nowhere, the mood completely brightens: the tones turn clean, the drums reveal a smoothness never hinted at in the previous three minutes, and you're catapulted into the middle of a full-blown fusion passage. But there's no time to settle in, because the tones quickly flare back up, the palm muting returns, and the thrash riffage takes over once more (closing, however, on a new jazzy break accompanied by birdsong!).

Four and a half minutes or so, but worth far more than that, given the rollercoaster of styles and vistas packed inside. Yet the full spectrum of possibilities within the Atheist sound has still not been entirely unveiled.

"Unquestionable Presence", the second track, opens with an enigmatic intro, a half-arpeggio alternating low and high notes topped by a minimal lead line, which only gradually reveals its key of F sharp minor — supplanting it, as soon as it's made clear, with another even less defined tonality, resting on B flat. The shift into the body of the song does nothing to dispel the disorientation: the riff, which sways between 7/8 and 10/8, is built on a fragment of a diminished scale, unusual and instinctively perceived as unstable, and is immediately followed by two opposing lines — lead guitarist Rand Burkey's guitar climbs through power chords along the steps of a pentatonic scale, while Kelly Shaefer's guitar simultaneously traces, in reverse order, almost the very same steps. We won't venture further into technical analysis, but continuing down that road would only yield further confirmation: the entire track — indeed, the entire album that takes its name from it — is structured to maximize the cryptic character of the compositions and the atmospheres they generate. Bar after bar, shift after shift, there's no telling what to expect from the immediate future, and even the present moment leaves you with nothing stronger than a sense of ambiguity. As if several possible readings coexisted at once, making it impossible to clearly decipher the landscapes conjured by the sound.

"Your Life's Retribution" reveals yet another facet of the band's sound: amid frantic tapping and a central section marked by the instantly recognizable Andalusian cadence (iv-III-II-I, the same progression as "Hit The Road Jack", the verse of "Sultans Of Swing", or the flamenco solo by Steve Howe in "Innuendo"), here it's the neoclassical element that combines with the tightrope-walking attitude also shown in the other tracks. The following "Enthralled In Essence" also carries similar classical-leaning touches, most evident in the descending line of the central break and in the solo immediately after it. Another element the two tracks share, and indeed many others on the record too, is the philosophical/existential theme of the lyrics. In tones that could easily be dismissed as vacuous and grandiose, but which work well within the mood of the song, "Your Life's Retribution" asserts that the only real learning comes from introspection on one's own mistakes ("Tarnished are the thoughts/ That have been told/ Wise men give me nothing real to hold/ The writings of the past/ Are paper thin/ If I seek the truth/ I'll look within"). Without straying too far in lyrical style, "Enthralled In Essence" takes on an almost gnostic bent, revisiting the age-old image of the body as a cage for the mind or soul ("As keeper of this body/ Just leave me with my mind/ And I assure you/ I will be just fine [...] The qualities of a finer being/ Locked well within this shell/ Crying out to be released"). The band's ambivalent relationship with the transcendent is underscored, beyond the lyrics and the chosen name, by the cover art too, created by illustrator Justice Mitchell based on a single instruction from the group: that it should show a girl praying on a hilltop, with planets in the background. An iconography with pantheistic echoes, offering an alternative frame of reference to the sometimes contrived satanism found in other significant acts within extreme metal.

From the opening arpeggio alone, played on open strings against a moving bass line, "An Incarnation's Dream" reveals the influence of Metallica on the band's style. Among the other key artists in the development of the Atheist sound, the group also cites the inevitable Judas Priest and Van Halen, the Swiss Celtic Frost and the Danish Mercyful Fate (among the first to push in the direction of black metal), as well as the godfathers of death metal Possessed. According to Kelly Shaefer, the main vocal models are to be found in two legends of German thrash: Schmier of Destruction and Mille Petrozza of Kreator. But the spectrum of inspirations doesn't stop at the hard&heavy realm. Yes, King Crimson, Frank Zappa and above all Rush are names that keep coming up in interviews, and the chameleon-like stamp of Neil Peart's drumming is easily detectable in the frequent ride patterns dotting drummer Steve Flynn's parts, in "An Incarnation's Dream" and elsewhere (it was reportedly hearing "La Villa Strangiato" from "Hemispheres" as a teenager that pushed the musician toward the instrument in the first place).

The other key reference point concerns the jazz fusion strand. Its influence is felt above all on the rhythmic and melodic level: drummers Dave Weckl, Vinnie Colaiuta and Steve Gadd are a guiding light for Flynn, while on guitar it's above all the sprawling jazz-rock phrasing of John McLaughlin and (most of all) Allan Holdsworth that fascinates the Burkey/Shaefer pair. Although many commentators detect a strong presence of "jazz chords" in the album's writing, this supposed harmonic underpinning is harder to actually find in the record's songs: the guitars mostly play single notes, or at most power chords which — being built from just two notes — are quite far removed from the rich extended chords that characterize jazz styles.

Things change a little (though truthfully not much) if the instrumental lines are considered as a whole, adding together the notes of the two guitars and the bass of ex-Cynic member Tony Choy. In this case, richer harmonizations do emerge, though they generally remain within the realm of suspended fourths or seconds, common enough in rock without needing to invoke jazz mentors. What is instead strikingly obvious, both in "An Incarnation's Dream" and in the following "The Formative Years", is the fusion influence on the role of the bass, which produces a metallic yet remarkably supple tone and often leaps to the foreground, carrying the song's melodic line while simultaneously acting as its rhythmic engine. It would be tempting to trace this approach back to Choy's background, but the Cynic sound's ultra-jazz mutation came after his replacement by Sean Malone in 1993. The bass parts on "Unquestionable Presence", for that matter, aren't Choy's work but that of Rogger Patterson, the band's previous bassist, who died in February 1991 in a road accident while riding in the band's van (the demo versions recorded with Patterson are available on Relapse's 2005 reissue of the album). Author of the band's logo and a huge fan of Geddy Lee, Les Claypool, Gene Simmons, Chris Squire and Steve Harris, Patterson was buried — or so Kelly Shaefer recounts — with a photo of his favorite bassist, Doug Keyser of Watchtower (another clear influence on the ever-present stop'n'go approach throughout the record).

Placing the album in context also requires two other key names. The first is that of Death, led by Chuck Schuldiner, a central figure in the evolution of death metal in a technical and progressive direction; the second is Scott Burns, producer of Death and Cynic as well as Atheist and a whole host of extreme bands: Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Gorguts, Atrocity... The two can be considered the main catalysts of the crucial Florida death scene, and it's hard to imagine a tortuous flow like that of "Brains" without the intricacy and ambition of "Spiritual Healing" (written by Schuldiner, produced by Burns) preceding it by just a year. If relations with the producer and sound engineer were always constructive, however, the same cannot be said of relations with the Death frontman. Initially a firm advocate of an anti-progressive line for death metal, Schuldiner regarded Atheist's jazz leanings as an eyesore and even went so far as to attack the band on ideological grounds, accusing them of Nazi sympathies (a T-shirt worn by Patterson, bearing only the two lightning-bolt "S"s of the Kiss logo, certainly helped fuel the rumor). Even if Schuldiner perhaps never changed his mind about Atheist, his outlook on the genre's future certainly shifted over time: as early as 1991, "Human" featured the two Cynic members Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert in its lineup, steering the album's sound noticeably toward some of the progressive refinements that would explode in 1993 on the sprawling "Focus".

"And The Psychic Saw", placed at the close, is one of the album's most intricate tracks and further clarifies its role in the metal scenes to come. The prominent, shape-shifting bass is a trait d'union with the sound of Dutch outfit Pestilence, who brought in Tony Choy for their "Testimony Of The Ancients", recorded in the first half of 1991 at the same Morrisound studios as Atheist, and who then swerved toward jazz/death with the following "Spheres". Atheist's direct influence can also be felt in other European bands of the era, including Finland's Demilich or Italy's Sadist ("Above The Light", "Tribe"). But it's above all in relation to the other bands of the Florida-based death scene (which over time would also draw in bands from elsewhere in the US, such as Malevolent Creation and Cannibal Corpse) that "Unquestionable Presence" marks a point of no return: after its release, the jazz/prog/death hybridization so clearly audible in the latin-funk breaks of "And The Psychic Saw" would keep pushing further, eventually leaning — with the likes of Portal, Gordian Knot and Aghora, or even Atheist's own later "Elements" — more toward the prog/jazz-fusion side than the metal one.

As the years went by, Atheist would be remembered as an inspiration by artists working outside the box, such as mathcore standard-bearers Dillinger Escape Plan, the eclectic groove/sludge/prog outfit Gojira, or Italy's own Ephel Duath, as well as by disciples of the hyper-technical school like Necrophagist, Obscura and Spiral Architect (the latter far less extreme than the former).

And yet, at the time, "Unquestionable Presence" was not well received by metal fans. For many insiders in the death metal circuit, hybridizing with less brutal genres was seen as a betrayal. And for those who remained attached to a more classic sound, Atheist's new formula was still too extreme regardless. Several shows, Kelly Shaefer recalls, were met with boos and rotten food being thrown. It didn't take too many years, however, for the prevailing perception to change. Today more than ever, more than thirty years after its release, the milestone represented by the album, and the pioneer status it grants the band, appears beyond dispute. Or rather: unquestionable.

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27/08/2023