Circles and Butterflies

This very episodic entry into the annals of metal is the continuation of Blackkout, a talented outfit who never reached the official release stage and were done by the end of the 80’s, still surviving long enough to leave an outstanding demo (“Ignorance of Man”, 1989) behind, a gigantic enterprise lasting for nearly 80-min, containing 17 compositions of engaging progressive power/thrash.

The year is 1993 now, and the guitar player Richard W. Elliott IV and the bassist Darren McFarland decide to give themselves one more chance and see how they could possibly fit into the shape-shifting 90’s canvas. They bring in the famed axeman Matt La Porte (R.I.P.; Jon Oliva’s Pain, Circle II Circle, etc.) along for the ride and are good to go. The final result of the guys’ efforts, however, is one of the most contrasting recordings from the 90’s, and not only, a bizarre combination of dazzling thrashing technicality and off-context non-metallisms that amazingly works thanks to the undisputable displays of genius scattered throughout.

Again, the quiet side of the album may be too exasperating for the purists as some may have difficulties justifying its inordinate length, but at least at the beginning such annoyances seem like a hypothetical nightmare with the opening “Inside the Circle” making dizzying circles around the puzzled listener who will be gaping with his/her mouth wide at the dexterous guitar pyrotechnics which have been extracted straight from Deathrow’s “Deception Ignored” and Sieges Even’s “Life Cycle”, with a few endearing surreal scratches on the canvas ala Psychotic Waltz; a most tantalizing showdown slightly marred by the overlong balladic exit. “Blackhours” follows suit, a nervy jazzy extravaganza which doesn’t have too many merits from a thrash metal point-of-view, but works with its eccentric, oblivious aura recalling Sieges Even again, but their later works. “Circle of Wills” is another masterpiece of mazy technical thrash, a sharp intricate lasher with superb vortex-like riffage ala Coroner, but “The Vow” is on the other extreme being a soft dreamy acoustic ballad.

“After … Birth” even makes it two in a row, a peaceful piece of tender melancholy which may make the fans nervous, and for a good reason. “The Circle Ends” (too many circles here…) puts an end to all anxieties with the next in line portion of technical mastery, an all-instrumental proposition which seamlessly blends hard impetuous thrashing with perplexing, mind-boggling pirouettes. When “Ghost from the Past” starts marching with these gorgeous surgical clinical guitars, one knows that the spell may have just been broken, and that the band would stick to their guns; this one is pure delight with the exquisite labyrinthine configurations which one may find beautifully abstract at times. More surprises and more diversity are in stall, though, first with “The Missing Piece” which is a funky merry-go-rounder with some progressive pretensions; and second with the tribute to the Celtic folk song heritage “Morgan’s Song”, a rousing sing-along hymn which turns to imposing orchestral balladisms towards the end. More of those are served on “The Spirit Lives” which combines fierce technical thrash with an overlong balladic interlude that kills the inertia, dubiously balancing things out in the end.

The more technical, also more aggressive section of this opus can pass for a highlight in any time and age, including making the guys some of the most prominent representatives of the German technical/progressive thrash wave if they had been a part of it. Even the most inspired moments from the Blackkout discography can’t hold a candle to the exuberant exhibition of musical wizardry that gets lost on the mellower material which presence is only too tangible to be completely ignored. I was fast-forwarding those tracks the first few times when I listened to the album; I was eating my heart out, and even now, for not being able to get to terms with them.

On the other hand, works of progressive metal can’t be expected to obey the fanbase’s expectations, we have similar introspective nuances on Psychotic Waltz’ “A Social Grace”, the Zero Hour and Mekong Delta exploits, not to mention other outfits who use them more profusely… I guess they run in the progressive metal family as a way for those acts to defy the laws of commonality and to delineate themselves from the run-of-the-mill, conveyor-like approach to the genre. The problem in this particular case is that they are too long and overbearing, and don’t gel with the rest, sticking too much, more of miscalculated displays of not very good taste than unobtrusive diversifiers.

Well, I prefer to bet on the other side which constitutes about 25-min from this nearly 50-min showing, a half of it to be precise. I pretend the other half doesn’t exist, and only rarely do I feel tempted to give it a quick perusal... if not for my own satisfaction, at least for the butterflies and the other elusive beauties that may lie hidden there.