Sage of Shekhinah

Back in the day when you listened to progressive music, you knew what was being played was real. You could have listened to prog death or prog jazz, but you knew and could tell there were no studio tricks. Ever since Necrophagist in the early 2000's, every "tech death" band has been tripping over themselves to achieve the synthetic vibe of the aforementioned band. I cannot tell you the sigh of relief upon hearing a progressive death metal band with this organic and natural sound.

This is not only metal of the highest caliber, but music of the highest caliber. It is so much cleverer than it needs to be. No doubt this band and specifically this album will go over the heads of most metal fans. The likes of this type of musicianship haven't been in and around the metal genre since the early 90's with bands like Atheist, Death, Fates Warning, Cynic, Watchtower, Queensryche (DeGarmo era), Psychotic Waltz, Spiral Architect, etc,

Speaking of the production. Veteran record producer Neil Kernon (Nevermore, Spiral Architect, Queensryche) was the perfect person for the job. The natural approach to the production is a key factor to its success. It separates Contrarian from the sea of quantized tech death. We will hear comments like "raw production" and "sloppy". These types of comments are indeed a result of how far the metal genre has deceived themselves with ridiculous studio productions (ROS type deathcore and quantized tech death being prime examples of this).

Once word should stand out when discussing the nature of the riffs and songwriting is this album - nuance. You cannot listen to this album just one time to capture this nuance. Both guitars and bass are constantly intertwining in different layers of execution. While manner of the songs do have a standard format, it is the clever transitions that make it so enjoyable. This is best displayed of the song "In Gehenna" where the rhythm guitars are harmonized, lead guitars are also harmonized, and the bass has a clever counter melody - all at the same time. Then add the dizzying polyrhythms of the drums also going on at the same time.

The vocals are the glue that keeps everything together. Jakob Sin's voice sets perfectly into the mix. Vocal placement is ideal, and his range is constantly varying to keep things interesting. Layering and delays are added here and there keeping things fun to boot.

While this is a shorter album at 34 minutes, the flow is what makes it work smoothly and accessible for multiple listens. Let's be honest, this new trend of hour-long albums has gotten out of hand. Hour long albums inevitably have tons of filler. No filler on this latest album from Contrarian, they get their point across and get out.

Again, no doubt there will be people calling the band an imitation of these bands. But here is the thing, musicians can only write this type of music when they are intellectually capable and there has not been capable people to do this in a long time. This album makes us realize how little modern tech death has to do with progressive death metal originators.

Do yourself a favor if you are into busy and layered progressive metal. Go get this album and spend sound time with it. 9/10

Time has shown that line-up from "Only Time Will Tell" (sic!) functioned - unfortunately - for a relatively short time, not to say temporarily. However, this did not stop the core of Contrarian enough for guitarists Jim Tasikas and Brian Mason to stop further activity. They quite quickly, in 2022, assembled a new line-up, including vocalist Jakob Sin and drummer Alex Cohen, as well as an old friend, i.e. bassist Ed Paulsen. With them, they composed and recorded together their fifth longplay, "Sage Of Shekhinah", which premiered in 2023 and caused...quite moderate interest. I don't want to fall into some crazy conspiracy theories (although...why not!), but after Contrarian toured alongside Suffocation and Atheist, the next album after such successes should have resonated much wider.

Meanwhile, it's quite different. "Sage Of Shekhinh", although quite good and maintaining a very equal level, imitates the late Atheist too much - so it lacks any catchy point beyond this band. The way the riffs are constructed, numerous twists, jazzy bass, screeching vocals, twisted drumming, emphasis on progression - at first you can think that you are actually listening to some newer, lost album of Kelly Scheafer's band. And it wouldn't be a bad thing if the topic concerned debutants or someone who is obsessed with "Unquestionable Presence" (after all, there is not a lot of such music), but the problem is that on one of their previous albums, more precisely "To Perceive Is To Suffer", the Americans could transform these influences into something their own and memorable. There is no such thing here; the disc is neither distinguished nor attracts for longer. Some oriental influences in the first track? Middle Eastern-sounding concept album? A few spatial guitar parts reminiscent of the Cynic from the times of "Traced In Air" in "In Gehenna" and "Ibn Al Rawandi"? It's definitely not enough to make "Sage Of Shekhinh" stand out from the known band beyond recognition. These kind of fresh elements are still overshadowed by how much Contrarian has pulled out of Atheist's discography here.

So there is a simple conclusion: "Sage Of Shekhinh" is disappointing compared to their previous albums. It's not totally bad, of course, but it lacks soul and something more than being a more contemporary Atheist. This is all surprising, because on several previous albums, these Americans had no major problems with transforming patterns of Kelly Scheafer's group into their own style.

Originally on A bit of subjectivism...in metal

Of all the revivalist genres to have plagued the metal landscape over the last decade, the return of early 1990s progressive death metal is one I can definitely get on board with. Given the nose dive to homogeneity that tech death took during the 2000s, this welcome course correction was required. Lost in endless tomes of dense, directionless musical esoterica devoid of soul and spontaneity, it became a closed border for the general populace, a feedback loop of musical esoterica aimed only at fellow musicians. Resurrecting some of the colour, life, dynamics, and organicism of earlier iterations of the genre has therefore been a welcome means to allow the listener to once again cross the border and engage in this music as a form of artistry as well as craft.

Contrarian slide nicely into this modernist tradition, offering complex sci-fi themed progressive death metal as playful as it is masterfully executed. ‘Sage of Shekhinah’ is their fifth such endeavour, it is notable for drawing on not just the techniques of Cynic, Atheist, and Watchtower et al., but also for nailing a sense of creative cohesion, and even leaving room for something as banal as “fun”. Ultimately this is music that has an audience in mind, real care has been taken to craft these compositions with strongly defined narrative arcs. For all their surplus activity, warping time signatures and dexterous chord progressions, a non-musical listener can still fully engage with, and orientate themselves, into the journey this music is attempting to take us on.

They pivot on a degree of rhythmic bounce, playful in its sense of humour, but never trivialising the overall experience. Crisp distorted guitars flesh out the mix with sharp clarity, but again, the object is not clutter or intensity despite the undeniably technical nature of the music. Plenty of space is left for the bass to cut through with engaging hooks and wonderful melodic vignettes, along with plenty of clean interludes where the music adopts a more jazz orientated style a-la Atheist. Vocals adopt the higher end of the death metal spectrum, working through harsh rasps of aggression that retain enough rhythmic clarity to navigate this three dimensional interplay.

Tonally, the overarching emotive effect of ‘Sage of Shekhinah’ is one of threnody. There are many tangents and routes hinted at but not fully taken. But the melodic core of the central leads are decidedly mournful, tragic almost. They speak of loss, aging, a mature acceptance in the face of the passage of time. But this overarching thread is given greater clarity and gravitas due to the excessive amount of external commentary, the many left turns the music takes, and the plethora of additional material provided by each instrument as it deviates from the central narrative to provide moments of antagonism, only to be folded back into the main narrative.

The quality of song writing on display here means we can almost dispense with any mention of the retro aspects of this album. Yes, it references elements of early progressive death metal and thrash, but this is almost incidental to the fact that Contrarian have succeeded in articulating a character and story of their own, one that stands apart without the need for us to over emphasise style and influence. A singular and strangely hypnotic success story for progressive metal.

Originally published at Hate Meditations