Writing about those bands who play eclectic music is about as easy as brushing your teeth with an ink-jet printer. I saw it first hand after hearing the last Candiria album, and deciding to review it. I can’t give you a three-hundred-percent guarantee that after reading my review, you will be able to make a clear and concise decision on whether or not to listen to «300 Percent Density», but I can guarantee you a maximum of facts and a minimum of emotions.

It may sound really strange in this case, but I’ll start the description of this album by defining its style. Despite the fact that Candiria’s music is extremely eclectic, I know one magic word which can describe it more than adequately. This word is art-core. Let’s take a close look at what it is, and how is should be cooked. During the 90’s of the last century (sounds global, huh?), some similar tendencies have been appearing in various genres of extreme music — and in particular, these tendencies involved using musical elements of genres which were at one time considered alien to metal, and/or punk. Despite the fact that this is true for almost all genres, we’re now interested in how these tendencies have influenced what is now called hardcore in America. In point of fact, even in the early nineties, developing hardcore (as it was) «internally» was almost an unrealstic prospect. The bands like Today Is The Day, Zeni Geva and Neurosis (»the holy trinity» of art-core) had to expand the boundaries of hardcore by using musical elements which were previously considered alien. This led to the huge hardcore boom which still exists today, which has resulted in hardcore actually turning into metalcore, i.e., into an almost indeconstructable crossover of hardcore punk and metal. However, crossing hardcore with metal wasn’t the only thing that happened — hardcore was also crossed with jazz, rap, industrial, sludge, stoner, ethnic music, ambient… in sum, everything that musicians found necessary was blended with hardcore, and the nightmare of music critics was born…

Enter art-core, the eclectic style of modern rock music based on metalcore, and developing it broadwise with the help of «foreign» elements taken from other genres and styles of music (ever tried to describe it in two words?). If you think that you’re spiritually ready to acquaint yourself with such a style, Candiria will be a great test of your readiness. As you have already understood, the description of «300 Percent Density» is a very difficult task, so we’ll start with the smaller things, piece by piece, and eventually build bigger things from them, until we gradually create the whole picture.

Candiria’s drummer skillfully modifies and complicates traditional simple rock music parts, mixing them with mechanistic rhythms a-la Meshuggah, jazz themes, math-core/techno-death intricacies and hip-hop rhythms that resemble Scorn at times, all the while adding in a plethora of little percussion solos. This creates the impression that the drum parts are just one big improvisation. Rhythm-wise, the drums are interlinked with the guitars, and together they create a quite anfractuously synchronized rhythmic grid that often resembles a cross between the aforementioned Meshuggah and Atheist. It can even be said that melody plays a secondary role in the music of Candiria, relinquishing the headline role to rhythm. The bass guitar often plays in unison with the guitars, but from time to time, it forays into the area of self-sufficiency. When the guitars are silent or playing «clean» parts, the bass lines are quite free, and allow themselves to play for their own pleasure, without overplaying. The guitar parts are diverse, yet quite simple in melodic department, but a certain rhythmic complexity gives us all grounds on which to compare Candiria with such brontosauruses of «percussion» guitar parts as Meshuggah. Truth be told, Candiria musicians prefer to hang out in the mid-tempo area — you won’t find any real fast parts on «300 Percent Density», and frankly speaking, this is good; had the musicians been playing even slightly faster, the task of following the composition would’ve been as easy as trying to decipher Anal Cunt lyrics without a lyric sheet. Stylistically the guitar parts can be relegated to techno-thrash (keeping in mind the unhasty pace) and to metalcore. Sometimes you can hear moments resembling Watchtower and Spiral Architect, in some songs there are «clean» parts, and repercussions of Atheist and Cynic can sometimes be heard as well. The vocal parts can be thought of as having two parts. Most songs operate with a screamy rattle, which is sometimes mutated with a voice harmonizer that gives it industrial overtones. From the points of rhythm and timbre, the vox somewhat resemble Phil Anselmo, often turning into a sort of recitation. The second vocal style consists of several variations on the «rap recitative» style, and is performed by both black and white vocalists. Rap vocals are certainly outside my field of knowledge, so I can’t describe them more specifically, but I guess their mere presence is descriptive enough for you. Keyboards are also used from time to time: their parts are either Scorn-like ambient backdrops (in the spirit of short instrumental Neurosis songs to such tracks as «Mass» and «Advancing Positions»), or they form a melodic foreground, often emulating the brass section of a jazz band (»Constant Velocity Is As Natural As Being At Rest»). As expected, the structure of most songs is complicated, wih nearly all of the abovementioned elements and no semblance of normalcy (at least I haven’t noticed any). The transitions between themes are always fluent and logical, notwithstanding the fact that they often connect stylistically different themes. You might think that the music of Candiria is too salad-like, but integrity is its important trait, which allows me to call it syncretic. You can also find a couple of strictly linear songs on «300 Percent Density», but as a rule, these songs serve as interludes (i.e., the aforementioned «Mass» and «Advancing Positions»), or serve as a hypnotic soundscape (»Opposing Meter»). The sound is very good, all instruments are clearly heard, with no messiness. The vocals could have been mixed a bit higher, but that’s entirely subjective. Unfortunately, I don’t have the lyrics, but judging by the song titles, they’re up to the level of the music.

Now do you understand what Candiria is? No? Okay, I’d better show you a couple of examples. The third song, «Without Water», starts with drum-machine beats and quickly turns into the two-note «clear» guitar melody which is followed by a hip-hop rhythm. Adding some diversity is a piano accompaniment, which is assisted by a repeating bass guitar line (it simply repeats the guitar line, albeit a little more intricately). Completing the picture is the light, airy synthesizer in the background. Soon enough, a white rapper enters the mix, after which a guitar steps in with some heavy feedback. Then the rapping turns to shouting, eventually giving in to (almost) clean vocals, while the music turns into a rhyth-driven metalcore. I’m not going to analyze the song any further, rather going on to the next one, which is a harsh ambient piece that resembles Neurosis’ dense, rich myriad of noises. Right after this song we have «Constant Velocity Is As Natural As Being At Rest» which starts with pure jazz and then melts into an Atheist-inflected theme (specifically, it resembles the song «Air» from «Elements»). Then the guitars quickly transform into something Meshuggah-like, while the rhythm section retains the same «jazziness» as before. Later, we are witness to another Meshuggah-like rhythm pattern (while the guitar theme stays the same), accompanied by a harsh, screamy rattle. After that, we have a transitional theme resembling technical metal in the vein of Confessor, which is followed by a jazz part that turns into something which painfully resembles Pantera. Then, the recurrent Meshuggah-like riffs reintroduce themselves. But since we have only covered a minute of the song (!), we’ll move on to the next — «Words From The Lexicon». Under the rapping of train wheels, we hear background keyboards/sample parts, which sporadically play a simple melody or two serving as an accompaniment for a conversation between the various guest rappers. That’s it, guys; you’re not going to find any guitars on this one.

Let’s sum it up. You will certainly like Candiria if you like originality, progressiveness (whatever that means), technicality, rationality, controlled expressiveness, emotional intellect, and urbanity. If you’re a purist or a conservator; if you like music for the «soul» rather than for the «brain»; if you like music with lots of catchy melodies; if you dislike rap, jazz and percussion-oriented music; if you prefer illusion to reality and an escapist fantasy world to a real, urban one — you’d better stay away from «300 Percent Density». All in all, Candiria isn’t for everyone. But if you can forgo the trappings of «immediate» or «simple» music, you are sure to enjoy this stuff for the long haul.

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