The Godz of Man

This is the first question I’m going to ask John Cyriis when we meet next month for our regular debunking of the current metal trends… kidding here, I’m not meeting him any time soon… although I may… I just haven’t set my mind on it. And I have to hurry, otherwise I’ll have to chase him into some other dimension through this really narrow Bermudan ass… sorry, loophole… I think I should go on a diet… but only after the New Year festivities.

Anyway, I’m listening to this only track here for the umpteenth time today, and I wonder: how exactly do you evaluate a single composition? I’ve only done it once, also as a New Year present for the audience here, but that was for Bulldozer’s “Love Train” single; that one was a "pieca shit, walk away" stuff and was easy… but here we have a product of John Cyriis, hello! Mystery Man Number One on the metal circuit, helloooo! On top of that, this last Cyriis initiative before the series of Agent Steel reunions/dissolutions was spawned in Amsterdam … no, not the New Amsterdam that you all know, the Manhattan-spearheaded one… I’m talking about the original one… yep, it was spawned in the one in Holland… hopefully not from a poppy seed.

Coming after a gigantic, over a decade long, creative hiatus this song, or rather hymn, is obviously an ode to all Gods, or rather Godz of man, tangible and imaginary alike. Cyriis first tested the waters under the Outer Gateways moniker, but this pretentious, mouth-filling name was swiftly scrapped and replaced with something more stellar. The man hides his true identity behind the Max Havlock alias this time, a slight change from his Black Reign alter ego (Max Kobol), probably another extinct spy from the Cold War era... Cyriis’ brother in arm in this new enterprise is another mysterioso, the Japanese guitar player Shuichi Oni, with no other act whatsoever in his resume. Japanese connections are bound to produce surprises, and this one is no exception; in fact, those familiar with Cyriis' previous spells (Pontius Prophet, Black Reign) after the first Agent Steel disassembly, will be left irrevocably shaken and irredeemably stirred…

cause this is nothing like the classic power/speed metal heroics cooked on the works of those two. Cyriis attempts something entirely different here, planting the (stellar) seeds for a more far-reaching progressive speed/thrash/death metal hybrid, or for a spacey extreme progressive metal opera if you like. To begin with the shortcomings: the sound quality is the familiar one from the works of the other two mentioned formations; blurry and plain murky at times. If that decision could be viewed some kind of an archaic boost to the proceedings earlier, here it plain impedes the ambitious rifforamas which flicker in and out of existence, materializing either as a dissonant psychedelic parade or as a dramatic deathy cumulative the latter fighting hard to be the leitmotif here, largely due to its more frequent application. Cyriis has finally voted to settle for his overtly expressive, pronounced tenors from the Agent Steel recordings, and leads the engaging soundscapes with panache and authority, never pitching it inordinately high like it was the case on the Black Reign demo; he is conscious of not stifling the lofty pyrotechnics of the Jap the latter weaving complex psychedelic tapestries unperturbed by the muffled production, hitting a few highs in the lead department as well although his true vocation are clearly the dissonant, disorienting guitarisms which will keep the listener guessing: is this another tribute to the old school, or is it a reverential read of the modern canons?

The truth is that this is neither; this is an encompassing conglomerate of overlapping musical currents that is hard to define by strict segregational stylistic terms. It reminds of both schools at various times with Cyriis’ excellent, highly emotional performance serving as the binding link between the two, his Japanese colleague feeling equally comfortable with whatever trend he has to immerse himself in. Genre-transcending for sure, this isolated phenomenon in Cyriis’ career is a sheer display of thinking outside-the-box, a progressive metal curiosity that could still be viewed just a sketch for something magnanimous and even less definable.

Is it better than the Pontius Prophet or Black Reign efforts, though? Hm, not quite sure… rather not. It’s a bit strange, this new direction taken, this lone number also having the aura of a solitary probe that may as well have hit an underwater stone, causing the crew to abandon the new trajectory. In the case of the other two outfits the way was clear: retro power/speed metal to the max be it more straight-forward and pummelling (Pontius Prophet) or complex and more intricate (Black Reign), Cyriis well versed in whichever diversion of said hybrid, beaming with confidence and enthusiasm. With this new at the time seed he kind of hesitates, “Well, I’m putting my heart and soul into it, as always, but I’m not quite certain where I want to reach with it… the sky is by all means the limit with such an encompassing delivery, but how ready am I to explore these less fathomable musical dimensions, taking a U-turn from my classic power/speed metal principles?”

A hypothetical dilemma, of course, which may as well be ungrounded having in mind that Cyriis and Oni had also started another venture at around the same time, S.E.T.I.; the style is reportedly modelled after the composition reviewed here; in other words, a salivating proposition which even had a title ("The 5th Race and the Eleven Dimensions") for a while, but at this point in time this idea seems partially (or completely) abandoned, largely due to the next-in-line Agent Steel reunion on the horizon. Still, the seed planted back then may as well prick the ground with the sixth Agent Steel full-length opus in the makings, the title at present being “No Others Godz Before Me”… surprisingly, no Japanese or Dutch connections anymore in sight, but Bill Simmons, the guitar player from the original line-up, has been brought back into action.

Hey, stubborn man this Johnny… or rather Max… continues to misspell “gods” to everyone’s annoyance... or maybe this is the new linguistic tendency, I don’t know… the man has been there into the unknown and back… he surely knows better. Linguistic pickings aside, let’s hope his new music delivers… although one hardly doubts that: it has long since become obvious that whatever the man touches he turns to gold. So pack up all your troubles, and trust the good old Mad Max: in this or in any other dimension he may cross over in the future, he will deliver… with myztery, inzanity and geniuz to zpare.