Uatism

Want to scare your friends? Want to turn your brain to mush? Want to find out which genre of music is for you in less than 30 minutes? For all of the above, head over to Uatism because this is quite fucked, to put it bluntly. The notion of the project was not to make conventional music, but for a large group of musicians to submit different ideas to finally be organized by Andrés Felipe Murillo, the "project manager" if you will. What that suggests is that there are a mighty lot of things going on during Uatism and that's dead right: everything from the musical styles, the singers' voices, the mood of the compositions, all the way to the lyrics are unbalanced and constantly changing. It seems like at least some of the people behind the project have had some experience in the wider field of art, since the nature of such music is conceptual to some extent, perhaps reflecting the way in which we live our modern lives and everything interconnects across boundaries, as the musicians have done across countries. In addition, the lyrical themes are described as "poetry" and "Exquisite Corpse", which is a surrealist technique for producing ideas and stimulating creativity, so reading through 'Death in Two Tongues' is likely to leave you scratching your head at the found text from - guess what - this actual website or the rather cute/disturbing verse that runs as follows:

"Hat prices are at an all time low
Grandmothers no longer exist
Sodomy's free with every sandwich trio
Conversation considered retro."

The musical quality is still important regardless of the concept and this is where things start to get seriously strange. As if it weren't enough to have so many contributors, the musicians were completely in the dark about what others were recording, so there is a whole patchwork of things coming and going, rarely sticking to any particular idea for more than a minute or two. While one couldn't exactly call the joins between death metal and Eurodance techno seamless, Murillo has at least made an effort to cover some of the cracks that appear when transitioning to other musical areas, so that nothing is completely abrupt and derailing. However, comparing this to regular music, those segments are problematic because there are some genres that are forced together very uncomfortably (see above for the words "death metal" and "Eurodance techno" sharing a sentence), though in fact the issue isn't helped by a general tendency to focus on metal, and particularly extreme metal, subgenres, making the other inclusions more awkward by comparison. The final spanner in the works is a different kind of problem. Because the styles change so completely, it feels like I'm listening to a compilation of random artists where each one is allowed only part of a song to prove their credentials: that means that there isn't much room to breathe when going from part to part, making the whole experience very tiring for the listener, not least due to the density of much of the content. As a result, the song lengths seem oddly long, especially since Murillo has (presumably) organized the material according to principles of best fit, so it would have made sense to finish songs more quickly in order to strengthen the links and allow more frequent breaks in listening.

As such, 'Death in Two Tongues' seems reasonable enough compared to the longer cuts, while 'Funeral Skrill' is the only consistent number, forming an industrial interlude in the middle of the EP. The other songs all have some great individual parts, especially the power metal leads and some blistering death metal riffing, though it remains mostly great parts rather than fully satisfying songs. The exception to that rule is the closer 'Reincarnation (Flowers' Requiem)' which swells from minimal beginnings to a nostalgic atmosphere of synths and a Russian singer striking a wonderful reflective mood, ending with a doomy comedown and the overspill of electronics.'Tower of Babel ~ "ie" at the End' is the most fucked, seeing as that's the song with the bizarre techno break, plus a truly tacked-on last segment of power/trad metal with female vocals, while 'Beliefs Turn to Bone' mostly works, sticking to coherent styles for most of its length and making the breakbeat-filled outro work owing to the continuation of sinister guitar chords in the background. However, even here there are other issues to be found, such as the first vocalist, who has overbearing enunciation and is too loud in the mix, in addition to the guttural belch of brutal death vocals that seems to go against the grain of the instrumentation.

I could go on and on about different elements of the music, but suffice it to say that most of the musical content works sufficiently well for this to be a decent listen, while it is the multifarious vocalists that cause most trouble with frequently unusual or attention-grabbing styles. If this had been an instrumental album, I could imagine that it would fit together a lot easier, especially since the vocals are the element of the music that tends to pigeonhole it and make other additions all the more confusing and disturbing. Three of the songs - not including 'Tower of Babel' and the interlude - I could see myself listening to again, though the opener is only useful for its weirdness and artistic value as opposed to being genuinely enjoyable. In general, this lives up to its skewed spelling of autism. Maybe that was some of kind of smart joke that I don't get, but I'm happy to recommend Uatism for anyone with an adventurous mind and sense of playfulness. Just don't, y'know, do acid and listen to this.

I'll spare you the obvious punchline, but holy crap this is inconsistent as hell.

On the one hand, on paper this idea sounds like an absolutely fantastic and creative idea. The idea of several musicians completely unrelated to each other turning in a piece of music on their own and one man making a rainy-day puzzle afternoon out of it is definitely an eyebrow raiser and something I have to tip my hat to. With that said, how something looks on paper and how it actually turns out are two very different outcomes. I think the biggest mistake Anders Murillo made was focusing on trying to fit the pieces into one song at a time, rather than separate each piece of music into patterns that naturally fit together.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the songs where the vocals go from proper singing to death metal vocals. It doesn't seem avant-garde at all, it seems trendy, and an extremely tired trend at that. I had had quite enough of this 3 Inches of Blood style nonsense for several lifetimes back when 3 Inches of Blood was a thing. "Oh, we want to get the Iron Maiden fans that hate cookie monster vocals, but at the same time we want to appear tough and cool to the Lamb of God kids." That line of thinking has never worked and will never work. All it does is alienate both fans of the styles. My advice is to pick one style of metal vocals and stick with them.

The best thing that this album has going for it in my opinion, aside from the idea as a discussion piece, is the production. I definitely give credit for avoiding that awful clicky bass drum sound that permeates all of modern production, yet one can still actually hear the bass drum fills perfectly. This is how a bass drum should sound relative to the rest of the instruments.

So....Highlights: Well, Reincarnation has a really awesome riff 3:00 that doesn't deserve to be surrounded by this crap. I hope Matt Pike or Andre Olbach steals it. Hell if Kai Hansen were to steal it that would be the musical equivalent of Goldfinger nuking Fort Knox and getting away with it. Beliefs Turn To Bone also has a fantastic first few Priest worship opening minutes. Even though there's the singer who sounds like the guy in Watchtower, who in turn sounds like that guy from Aqua Teen Hunger Force taking the piss out of Geddy Lee. Though the vocals aren't nearly as obnoxious as they were somewhere in the first two tracks where he was REALLY taking the piss. Then Chris Barnes seems to step in for a cameo, though it would have been much smarter for him to show up during Death In Two Tongues. It picks back up a minute or so down the line and turns into a brilliant ron Maiden moment before a Children of Bodom moment pops in. I like Bodom but like I mentioned earlier, "harsh" vocals should not be mixed in with...and now its just switched to techno. Dandy. I guess that's not as awful as the middle of Tower of Babel where it decides it would be a good idea to make Rob Halford the lead singer of Smash Mouth.

Seriously, it sounds like Smash Mouth. Get my Rob Halford out of your Smash Mouth, dammit.

I'm afraid I must call into question Outer Rim's idea of what constitutes "avant-garde." Techno, industrial and alt-rock were the best far-reaching idea you guys could come up with? Why not Dixieland jazz? It's got several syncopations. Samba? Indian? Blues? Fucking Necromantia figured out how to throw a saxophone onto their album and get away with it! Granted it wasn't during the actual black metal part but still!

Well that was retarded. I mean this could have been much worse. It could have been the length of a double CD. Time to go cleanse this with Status Quo's "Slow Train," and I suggest the Mr. Murillo go do the same thing. How is it that Francis Rossi can succeed at doing what this album fails by making a blend of boogie, rock, thrash, jazz and a fucking Irish jig while only knowing three chords? To all the metal-archives.com people who contributed to this, I'm almost sorry to have to piss on your painting ala Mel Brooks, but this is what happens when you submit work for approval from others. Maybe I'm just dumb and don't get it because I like simple thinks like Status Quo, but I went into this with the promise of cohesion, expecting it and not hearing it.