PsyOpus – Odd Senses
Posted on February 18, 2009 at 8:00 am by admin
I discussed one time with a guitarist that if a person had more playing skill, it could open up more creative avenues. It usually doesn’t work out that way, and I always find myself surprised at the crazy bizarre soundscapes people are able to come up with when all they have is just a bass, guitar, drums and vocals, and keep the playing simple. There’s a flip side as well, as how many technical players have you heard who simply recycle old ideas? I heard about a guy who could play Yngwie Malmsteen songs note for note, solos and all. I’m not sure that even Yngwie himself could do that…
Onto “Odd Senses” though. Those of you who know PsyOpus probably know how over-the-top technical they are, yet there’s still some weird ideas being toyed with that are sometimes less about technical playing and more about strange noises. Heck, there’s even samples. The majority of the album consists of tons and tons of high end guitar work, be it runs, dissonant tons or weird noises strewn together into a grindy start-and-stop mess of broken glass. It’s sometimes to the point where it’s a guitar show, as it seems like there’s tons of space between the harsh vocals. That’s not to say that hearing some of these cool tricks pulled together in a song isn’t cool or catchy, but the album lacks the support of a rhythm guitar between the high-registering noises an the bass. While I want to say it seems like the bottom has fallen out, but since there’s really nothing resembling a rhythm guitar on the album, there’s really no bottom to begin with.
If you can get past the lack of having any bottom end, then the strange instrumental interludes will be no problem, however you might find yourself stuck on the samples in the songs “Boogeyman” and “Choker Chain”. “Boogyman” has a bunch of pre-recorded spoken word segments from several different people chopped up and strung together word-by-word. The first couple of times you hear this segment, it’s so bizarre that’s it’s compelling, especially sandwiched between the jagged grind. Unfortunately the effect is overused, and the cobbled up spoken word segment drags on too long, and cuts up the song to the point where it should’ve already ended. “Choker Chain” is built in a similar fashion, but between the grind the sampling is a girl saying a standard line and having the sample repeated very quickly. Again the effect is overused.
So there you have it, some weird grind guitar tricks and noises pulled together as songs, which can actually be fun to listen too. The lack of bottom end will certainly put some people off, and those songs with the HUGE sampling can easily be skipped. Unless of course you too are some weird music freak, then I’m sure you could chop those songs up into something even more intolerable.
Released February 17th, 2009
PsyOpus at MySpace
Metal Blade Records at MySpace
Buy this album at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
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