Project Lamda

Given how fucking cool their debut album was and that they're filling a niche that Vektor left a pretty huge hole in, I'm a little surprised that I haven't talked to anyone else about Venus recently. The Greek band arrived with a clear idea of what they wanted to do, and this Project Lamda provided their opening statement with a pretty involved half hour EP. It rates next to Obscured Until Observed as a high quality effort in tech thrash that shows a bit of individuality beyond the expected influences.

For starters, Venus have seemed more melodic than Vektor since the start, and don't have nearly so much "difficult" material as the granddaddies of spacey thrash, Voivod. It may help that both the core members of the project are lead guitarists, so those ideas must get worked out first and sometimes the specificity of riffs or rhythm parts will just serve the leads. The band have also noted their interest in power metal such as Helloween, which you can glimpse in a few of the scintillating melodic runs they pull off during 'Art of Illusions', but also the way they move around transitions, using a lot less in terms of percussion than anyone you'd care to call progressive or technical. 'Multilingual Monstrosities' provides a good example of that, when clean vocals come out too and we almost have a melodic overload due to all the pitches dancing around. That said, although the drums are apparently programmed, they sound pretty decent.

The band also attempt to bring character to compositions in different ways. It wouldn't escape anyone's notice that 'Helios Abandoned' starts off as a piano ballad, although few would actually call it one when the piano serves all kinds of atmospheric ends and the clean vocals used constitute one of only a couple of deviations from a raspy yet clear singing style. Discordant features do have their place too, although I suppose I just notice them less since the overall saturation of sound remains largely melodic. Again, these tend to come from the guitars, which maintain a sprightly tone throughout. My only slight disappointment with the EP comes from the long title track, which seems to hold itself together a bit less than the other tunes. However, the most part of the listen feels satisfying and natural, while of course every solo is to die for.