Invisible City opens with the kind of acoustic meandering that defined Alice in Chains’ unplugged album. It’s pure Seattle and I was left wondering if I was in for a grunge surprise. Well, apart fromthat opening bit there’s nothing on Invisible City that resembles grunge in any way. Invisible City sees the band employ the “everything but the kitchen sink” idea to great effect pulling out influences from all over the place and putting together an album that’s heavy, intense, technically marvelous and quite fucking memorable.

I’m finding it quite difficult to define this band’s sound or to place it in some sort of box. There are influences here from the noise rock of The Jesus Lizard to the distortion heavy hardcore of Today is the Day to the post hardcore sounds of At the Drive In and Cave In and even punk rock and some vaguely Iron Maiden style guitar harmonies. This album is schizophrenic and the songs should be a complete mess but somehow the songwriting is of such high class that it all fits together and works.

Stand out tracks include the superb Not Your Choice which sounds like Mastodon jamming with Today is the Day and allows the vocalist to go through a whole range of styles even as the guitarists pull of one hell of a precision jam. Best song on the album but not by much. Sacred Peel is the shortest song on the album and is just complete hardcore aggression and comes as a welcome change from the uber-experimentalism of the rest of the songs on the album. The music has a dissonant feel to it but at the same time the band employ catchy grooves and the occasional melody that ensures that the songs stay in your head. Missing Lion Returns uses female vocals and there’s a terrific dynamic between the male and female vocals here and the song is some more superb technical heavy music.

The band reminds me a lot of Oxbow in a lot of ways without actually being musically similar to that band. There’s the same sense of “fuck you” experimentation and an attitude of anything goes while still paying a lot of attention to song craft. All you fans of Mastodon, Burst, Intronaut and that whole scene of technically complex heavy music, check out Invisible City and Wetnurse. This is one album that will grow on you with every listen and was a very pleasant surprise for me.



Label - Seventh Rule
Year of Release - 2008