Symbolic

Symbolic is an album I consider perfect. After the first listenings you may disagree, but then take another listen and feel how it simply gets better and better.

I still don't remember when I got the cd. When looking back, all I see is the strange, but somehow catchy cover artwork staring into my mind. Complex, beautiful, and strange, but what does it mean? This is pretty much how I felt about the music at first. I liked the catchier songs like Crystal Mountain and Empty words with their melodic riffs and memorable choruses, the great guitar work, and especially the insane drumming by Gene "the atomic clock" Hoglan, but the other songs were rather difficult to remember. They just seemed to sound too similar and without a pattern. I knew there was a lot happening musically: riffs over riffs, intense vocals, and a wall of drumming, but for some time the songs just managed to escape my comprehension. Due to its euphoric reviews, I started listening again and again, and one by one the songs revealed their true nature - beauty hidden by complex riffing and song structures; like climbing a mountain I had to try again and again, but once arriving at the top, Symbolic offered me a overwhelming view on a musical landscape that's a beautiful, detailed patterns and boring not a single moment.

Song after song started to make 'sense' to me. Every instrument and every riff wasn't playing somewhere somehow, but rather to create a certain atmosphere of sadness, sorrow, hope, or disgust. And don't let the harsh scream/shout of Evil Chuck distract you from the music. He isn't singing about disemboweling corpses, but about very personal and social issues like the growing observation and therefore loss of privacy (1000 Eyes) or the abuse of power by the church (Crystal Mountain).

Clearly necessary for such a complex album is outstanding musicality, and these guys definitely have it. As already mentioned, Chuck and Gene are doing most of the show here, but Bobby also has some serious skills (listen to the second guitar lead in Symbolic). Kelly Conlon at the bass guitar stays rather in the background, even though he sometimes breaks out of just following the guitar riffs (Sacred Serentiy, Without Judgement, and most notably, Crystal Mountain). What really helps getting into Symbolic is the excellent mix. It is clear and balanced, but not as sterile as many modern productions. You can hear every single instrument, although the bass could have been a bit louder.

Describing the genre of Symbolic, to give you a rough idea of what this album sounds like, is another really difficult thing. Is it death metal? Not really. Although Chucks vocals are rooted there, the melodic riffs and the progressive solo work disqualifies this from being death metal. And what about thrash metal? Technical death metal? Progressive metal? The last one seems to be fitting best, but after thinking about this issue for some time I came to the conclusion that every existing genre can only describe parts of Symbolic, thus it is best if you take a listen (Youtube, amazon...).

So do yourself a favour and by Symbolic instantly. Listen carefully to single instruments and passages, but then again to the album as a whole. Lose yourself in the sheer beauty (!) of those guitar leads and try to figure out what kind of miracle Gene is doing behind his kit. I listened to this album probably more than 200 times just in the last two years and every single listen was another stunning experience through Chuck's way of composing music. Still I haven't found a single flaw.