Jar of Kingdom

The Australian scene can also surprise us with its unusual metal music. Well, boasts even more daring and unconventional metal bands than those from America who were said to be pioneers at the time of their release! One of these blessings was the Australian Alchemist - a band impressive in its originality, far from clear comparisons and with its own style, although from today's perspective quite forgotten/omitted/underrated. The beginnings of the band were, by the way, extremely interesting. Alchemists started in 1987 and their first three tapes (with the 1991 demo being indicated as the best) are full of energy, yet twisted death metal, being a kind of response to Cynic (the pre-focus one), Voivod, Atheist (up until their debut), Sadus or...psychedelia. For the Alchemists, however, such fusions quickly seemed too narrow, and with the release of their debut album in 1993, entitled "Jar Of Kingdom", the Australians broke with that style, converted and brutalized it, twisted and turned everything they could out of it by 180 degrees, and an absolutely unique mixture was created.

So I'm writing about the fact that from the very beginning, just releasing their debut, Alchemist were unrivaled in terms of the twisted style they operated in. They didn't play like band x or y, they could be compared to them at most. When we start listening to "Jar Of Kingdom", we're in a totally different dimension - which can be suggested by the very unusual, yet eye-catching cover art. Of course (sic!), "Jar Of Kingdom" shares some common points with the demos, which is referred to by some clean guitars, the surreal atmosphere or constant contrasts, but you can feel that in the case of their debut it's definitely bolder, without anyone's influence and more thought out. Above all, this music captivates how Alchemists intriguingly and smoothly intertwine brutality, progression, avant-garde atmosphere, and also how skillfully they entangle various, crazy guitar effects into such a crazy wilderness. The second one is particularly interesting, as the dirty and twisted background music contrasts with the guitar sounds coming straight from the spaciousness of 70s rock, which complement each other perfectly and show us that on "Jar Of Kingdom" even such distant components can coexist together.

The level of advancement and madness makes a stunning impression on Alchemist's debut. At times, it even resembles improvised experiments from "Obscura", and considering that it was 5 years before the avant-garde volte-face of Gorguts, the Australians deserve an even bigger plus here. Besides, "Jar Of Kingdom" reaches for various forms, and at the same time, sounds coherent, does not tire with such a wide range of means of expression and does not forget about the classic, metal heaviness, an example of which can be found in "Abstraction", the title track (with irritating laughs at the beginning), "Brumal: A View From Pluto" or "Wandering And Wondering" (with an intro as if we had jumped for a moment into the middle of a county fair). Further, the most crazy and merciless in this respect songs also make an equally impressive impression. I mean "Enhancing Enigma", "Shell" and "Worlds Within Worlds", sounding as if they were created on acid (in all phases), combining the most extremes into brutal and spatial compositions.

There is, of course, a lot of good to be said about the musicians of Alchemist themselves. Adam Agius, as the leader of the band, comes up with a lot of great ideas for a songs, and he completely rules with his brutal growls; Roy Torkington complements his guitar parts by adding variety; Rodney Holder gives the right rhythm to all this madness (from simple patterns to technical and brutal ones); and John Bray is able to break through to the forefront with quite subtle bass parts, diversifying the guitar parts. The production also makes a positive impression, which, despite a large amount of low sounds, is natural, exposes details well and does not blur the overall heaviness. For such advanced music, the underground sound, surprisingly, did not deprive the Australians' style of its expressiveness and respect for detail - which is usually not difficult to obtain in this type of production.

Alchemist's debut is therefore a gem among avant-garde music. Even in these early times, Adam Agius's band showed themselves as a completely unusual band, confident in themselves and following their own path. "Jar Of Kingdom" is of course not an album for everyone, because the level and quality of experiments overwhelm here in any area, although even in such a very difficult stylistic the Australians managed to create many engaging, unique and memorable songs. And it should be remembered that we are talking about an album that was clearly ahead of its time and has a very high entry to full understanding.

Originally on A bit of subjectivism...in metal

The first thing I heard from these Aussies was the stellar “Organasm”. I was listening to these cosmic extraterrestrial sounds which I had problems placing within the scope of any known genre except as spacey, psychedelic progressive metal, something not necessarily heard constructed in the same way previously. I naturally tracked down their earlier discography, and I was left bemused by the preceding “Spiritech” pretty much in the same way. I didn’t like “Lunasphere” a lot; I found it too dry and mechancial-sounding, and also too scattered with good ideas not very carefully assembled.

So it was going to be a fluctuating ride, the Alchemist catalogue, and based on the not very positive impression the sophomore produced on me, I didn’t have very high expectations for the album reviewed here, the last one I got a hold of. After the first two listens I didn’t know what to make of it; it sounded like some crooked form of doom, with a twisted dash of death metal, and yet it wasn’t performed according to the already established canons of these two genres. It was a most weird, delineated listen which started making sense bit by bit, but it did take some time…

So inventive, original metal wasn’t restricted to Europe (Finland, Italy, Germany, Holland) anymore; quirky bizarre sounds were rising from Down Under so this part of the world had to be taken seriously as well by the audience. Said audience may be totally dumbfounded exposed to “Abstraction”, the Jar opener, which starts with a pacifying soothing tune taken straight from a David Lynch film, but tortured agonizing death metal vocals hit along with surreal atonal guitars the latter forming a whirlpool of twisted Demilich-esque lunacy, the whole amalgam having a strange peaceful tone, nothing rushed or overtly brutal. “Shell” develops in an elegiac doomy mode, but jarring bizarre sounds invade the aether at some stage soon replaced by a fast-faced, bass-dominated section; expect the pondering eclectic doomisms to wrap it on later in league with more outlandish melodies from the David Lynch catalogue. “Purple” serves bigger dynamics reaching blast-beating proportions, the urgent discordant riff applications reminding of Disharmonic Orchestra with a shade of Voivod-ish dissonance adding more spice to this most psychedelic listening experience. The title-track is a cacophony of sounds even bringing the works of Pink Floyd and King Crimson to mind in the beginning with its 70’s spacey vibe; impetuous death/thrashing commences out of the blue in its turn replaced by more intricate meandering decisions with hectic twisting guitars creating a lot of elaborate dramatism, with rhythms jumping up and down in a seemingly illogical fashion.

“Wandering and Wondering” offers miasmic dissonant death metal riffage ala Carbonized and Cadaver, but later more relaxed power metal-ish gallops appear among doomy and balladic “excursions”, with even female vocals added to the very eventful fore on the short acoustic “Found”. “Enhancing Enigma” is an Oriental extravaganza its psychedelic, dissonant aura the first indication of the metamorphoses lying ahead; expect more vivid thrashy configurations, cavernous doom, lyrical balladisms, and some virtuoso bass explorations. And this is not all as “Brumal: a View from Pluto” follows suit with creepy industrialized melodies, brutal deathy outbursts, more 70’s hallucinogenia… all the way to the closing “World Within Worlds” which spends quite a bit of time in dreamy balladic moods with eccentric thrash/death rhythms disrupting “the idyll” which still has the final word at the end.

At that time this opus was one of the four most bizarre, avantgarde recordings in the annals of metal alongside O.L.D.’s “Lo Flux Tibe” (1991), Verwaint’s “It Now Remains for Us to Explain” (1992), and Carbonized’s “Disharmonization” (1993). It defies all possible descriptions, and yet it amazingly has a tying plot line which keeps this whole thing together, miraculously. The offbeat, left-hand-path of metal was right there in the midst of the early-90’s, going way beyond the jazz/fusion-induced “lullabies” of Cynic, Atheist, and Pestilence. Other acts (Flounder, Mind Eraser, Nomicon) were stirring the underground with their less ordinary visions, but those were nothing compared to the eccentric chaos and illogical nuances on full display here. Later acts like Ephel Duath, Fantomas and Thought Industry built entire careers on such bizarreness… something which Alchemist were not willing to do. The follow-up was already a much more orthodox affair despite its clinical, sterile guitar work and more complex song structures. The guys wanted to sound more serious and more ambitious, a decision that found a grand realisation in the years to come.

Sadly they’re no more, but the band mainman Adam Agius was willing to continue, and he formed another outfit, The Levitation Hex, in team with musicians from the progressive thrashers Alarum. The style is a logical continuation of the one from the last couple of Alchemical formulas, maybe a bit more trippy and spacey, and less complex, based on the two albums released so far. Traces of any musical aberrations akin to those here are nowhere to be found so the fans should be aware that the chapter of otherworldy experimentations has been closed for good, for better or worse.

Even so long after it was first released, Alchemist's "Jar of Kingdom" is still one of the most tripped-out metal albums one is likely to hear. At the start of the 1990s, Australia's metal scene was really still in its infancy. Very few bands had recorded or released full-length albums and most weren't well known outside of their home towns as only the most well-established could be guaranteed crowds of a size that would make touring worthwhile. Despite this, it's unlikely that a band as strange as Alchemist could have remain undiscovered for very long.

No other metal band in the world was doing anything as remotely weird as this Canberra four-piece, and few do so even today. "Jar of Kingdom" is, succinctly described, rather like what a death metal album by Pink Floyd would sound like if Frank Zappa was their musical director. The arrangements are angular and virtually disjointed at times; the music is almost confusing in its quirkiness and the effect is sometimes harsh and otherworldly. At times, it's not like listening to a metal album at all.

"Jar of Kingdom" is a very strange album with some very strange elements. 'Whale', for example, is the sound of a whale accompanied by some rather peculiar instrumentation. 'Shell' contains some ethereal, slightly off-key keening by female vocalist Michelle Klemke, a strident counterpoint to Adam Agius' still-undeveloped death growls. The slide guitars and keyboards that dominate later Alchemist albums aren't as prevailing here but the grinding death metal undercurrent of the tracks are offset by abrupt, jarring, discordant guitar notes, strange psychedelic passages and swirling acoustic interludes. This is Alchemist at their rawest and most experimentally bizarre, a band pushing the envelope of creativity to such a point that even through the diabolical sound quality of the recording it remains clear that a dauntingly inventive musical outift has emerged. The ten tracks here marked Alchemist, then and now, as a band that plays by nobody's rules but their own. "Jar of Kingdom" is a journey that begins looking down on the world from the Moon, travels through the planes of the human psyche, conception and perception and ends far out beyond the reaches of the Solar System. It's a trip that is as wild and uncanny as it sounds and some may find it a just a little bit too odd to comprehend.

"Jar of Kingdom" was a groundbreaking album, not just for Alchemist but for the Australian metal scene. The original Lethal version is a rarity now, but the sound quality is so poor that only the most rabid collector would want to track it down. Fortunately, Alchemist remixed this album in late 1998 and reissued it the following year so that everyone could finally experience it the way it was meant to sound. Not only that, but they included tracks from their 91 demo as well, one of which, 'Womb Syndromb', exceeds even "Jar of Kingdom" itself in weirdness.