Lunasphere

With such crazy material as "Jar Of Kingdom" it was hard to expect miracles for some immediate career or total applause, after all we are talking about an album, next to which difficult albums like "Focus", "Elements" or "Spheres" could seem as...quite pleasant, easy to understand and not containing any major extremes! And why should it be surprising, Alchemist showed themselves on their first full-length as a band extremely insane and going beyond typical reasoning, even for metal experiments - something like Pan.Thy.Monium and Phlebotomized, despite a different feeling of the whole. Shortly after the release of the first album, the Alchemist guys did not care much whether they were sufficiently digestible or not and decided - how else - to jump into an even greater avant-garde than before. Two years after their debut, they hit the underground scene with their second studio album (preceded by a promo), entitled "Lunasphere", on which Adam Agius' group improved their production skills, introduced many novelties and - once again - confirmed the uniqueness and cosmically high level of their style.

On "Lunasphere" the description that came to mind when they made their debut is even more accurate - nobody played like that! And indeed, on the second album the band comes off so uniquely that "Jar Of Kingdom" in the context of its background, despite being brilliant and phenomenal, is situated like a foretaste of the pure madness of the Alchemist. The way of writing riffs (without showiness or banality), various effects, crazy atmosphere, psychedelic guitar inserts, sophisticated drums, furious vocals (about them - in a moment), developed structures and the energy emanating from this music are so unique that you will immediately catch Alchemist's individual approach to composing progressive, avant-garde and extreme songs. Okay, the subject of the uniqueness of the avant-garde death metal performed by the Australians is behind us, so what exactly has changed compared to the first album? Well, to put it simply, a lot.

It's still a really crazy death metal, where heavy riffs are accompanied by clean and cosmic-sounding guitar inserts that smell of 70s rock, and the group does not stick to strictly defined rules, often surprising, and also taking care to make it both brutal, but no less atmospheric and rich in terms of captivating patterns. A novelty on "Lunasphere" are numerous oriental (or if you prefer - folk) sounds, which work perfectly with the fleshy sound of guitars. In "Yoni Kunda" there is, for example, a impressive, Middle Eastern harmony, the miniature "Luminous" exotically builds tension (before one of the best tracks), and in "Garden Of Eroticism" the oriental-like percussion instruments are brilliantly sampled, which is why it's impossible to get the first motif out of your head - it attracts attention so much. Adam's vocals and - in general - the production have also moved forward. Agius maintained the previous level of wildness, and in addition to the growls, he also added a lot of frightening squeals, which further emphasize the energy emanating from the album, while the production became more professional, which was particularly beneficial for the guitars, drums (with a nice, high-pitched snare) and vocals, and least of all the bass, although in this case it's not surprising, because John Bray's parts are not the core of these compositions.

Just like last time, "Lunasphere" is a treasure trove of unique and incredibly characterful songs, in which the authors clearly show that no boundaries limit them. Alchemist style was so capacious that each of the songs contains its own separate and unique idea, has an unusual, captivating atmosphere, and, well, this album only sometimes refers to the first album. On "Lunasphere", all the songs deserve applause, but if you want to immediately get to know what the genius of Alchemist is and experience it in the most hit form, it's best described by "Clot" (with great guitars introduction), "Closed Chapter", "Unfocused" (the drum beat will immediately catch your ear and you won't want to leave it) or the mentioned "Yoni Kuda" and "Garden Of Eroticism". However, I would recommend checking out the whole album.

Undeterred by the poor reception of their debut, the Australian Alchemist boldly continued their death metal avant-garde in an even crazier form, developing it with oriental sounds and with much more professional production. Alchemist moved the previous peak even higher, created a work that is bold and difficult to compare with anything/anyone (also to their other albums), and at the same time it turned out to be very important in the band's discography, giving even greater influence on their future releases. Well, Alchemist couldn't get enough of THAT album and on the next releases, they went beyond extreme metal, surprising...in a completely different way.

Originally on A bit of subjectivism...in metal

Yep, humble were the beginnings for the legendary alchemists… in dark cavernous underground labs, those ravaged by the inquisition eventually. Still, these sorcerers/scientists managed to save some of their magickal formulas by putting them in small jars… well, I guess when you know how to turn metal into gold the world is yours for the taking, and mere two years later the guys were already aiming for the Moon itself and all the other spherical entities around it.

Not so fast, lads, not so fast; the gold offered here doesn’t quite glitter blindingly. It does capture the imagination more than just occasionally, but the listener is still far from the spiritual enlightenment, the orgasms, and the alien encounters with which his/her world would get saturated later. Yes, this is one of the strangest recordings of the 90’s, and not only, but is more of a blink-and-you’ll-botch-it experiment than a glorified, sure-handed masterpiece. I have to admit I didn’t like this album the first time it graced my ears, simply cause I had already left my heart and soul with both “Organasm” and “Spiritech”, two landmarks in artistic creativity.

Quite a few years down the line, I don’t see this spherical lunacy such an awkward occurrence anymore. I don’t as I understand its purpose/function now, the mediator between the crooked jarry… sorry, jarring death metallisms on the debut and the more expansive, more futuristic, but not-as-easy-to-categorize “Spiritech”. As such it shares traits from both efforts, also managing to carve a strict individualistic niche for itself as literally nothing out there sounded like this back then.

To describe a work of twisted art like this isn’t easy, but I’ll give it a try: as an introduction gesture the guys have decided to sum up their first outing, and the opening 8.5-min odyssey “Soul Return” offers exactly that, complex miasmic death metal with a pleiad of disorienting motifs and nuances; a brutal complex affair with dry mechanical riffs and Adam Agius’ apocalyptic semi-shouty deathy vocals torturing the listener’s psyche amongst bouts of illogical time-changes, sudden quiet ambient stopovers, and weird melodic tunes some of those produced by all kinds of other instruments (cymbals, citra, bazooka, etc.). Those who have missed to hear the preceding “Jar of Kingdom” will receive a cupful of its contents spilt in a barely organized, semi-cacophonic manner. After this adequate summation exercise the delivery can swing in any direction known to the human ear, and the band don’t disappoint throwing in the short hallucinogenic industrialized etude “Lunation”, the very aptly-titled “eclectic Oriental sounds vs. brutal death” madness “Unfocused”, and another but more coherent tribute to deathy Oriental music lore titled “Clot”, a hygienic dispassionate wink at the Jewish (Salem, Melechesh, Orphaned Land) metal repertoire.

Orientalism becomes the dominant leitmotif in the second half, and although some of you may catch themselves swaying or even dancing on the enchanting doomy delight “Yoni Kunda”, there will be few to last through the torturous mechanistic death metallity of “My Animated Truth”, or through the intimidating scattered tech-death shenanigans of the near-impromptu-executed “Closed Chapter” this track exuding some logic due to the inserted more sensible melodic strokes. “Garden of Eroticism” is more of a “Garden of Metallic Orientalism”, a superb progressive amalgam of moods, sharp metal riffs, and alluring melodies that would bind the music legacy of the Middle East, India, and China into one fascinating kaleidoscopic whole, a thrilling carnival that betrays the sterile nature of the other material.

The band’s infatuation with Oriental music folklore will reach a culmination later (just remember the incredible “Chinese Whispers” from “Spiritech”), but here it starts taking a more meaningful shape, still contaminated with all sorts of not very compatible ingredients, the guys’ more melodic soul fighting hard with their brutal death metal roots and their new-found fondness for all things mechanical and industrial. This last predilection can be explained, the times were ripe for the less passionate sounds of the Universe, and it made perfect sense for a not very well-known yet Australian outfit to give them a try… the thing is that this compilation sounds random more than now and then, like the band’s enthusiasm to reveal more from their kitchen is bigger than their compositional/structural skills at this stage. On the other hand, having in mind that the debut was based on a very similar charmingly dishevelled layout, this scattered mind frame to song-writing may have been intentionally applied, the last temptation at a stream-of-consciousness delivery, the band exorcising their chaotic proclivities once again, they were way too many for this to happen with just a single full-length, thus bracing themselves to conquer the metal arena with more serious albeit by no means more simplistic works…

and they achieved exactly that, with a string of stellar progressive metal opuses, futuristic encompassing sagas that put our favourite Alchemists on the very top of the metal circuit Down Under. It’s debatable whether their diverse multifarious style reached a climax on “Tripsis”, to these ears this is the least worthy effort of the last four, but Agius’ desire to continue his career under a different name (The Levitation Hex), and with new comrades (members of the tech/prog-thrash/deathsters Alarum) put an end to the dark alchemical ages. Fruitful those ages were, and this ode to the Moon and its spheres is surely a distinct, if not as glittery, addition to an impressive discography.