Alchemist
Tripsis
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All that glitters...
If there’s one thing Australia’s Alchemist have been guilty of in recent years, it’s been a tendency to lay on the shtick awfully thick. From the world music influences and the addition of spacious keyboards to the serpentine guitar melodies and vocalist Adam Agius’ environmental themes (which border on overbearing), it all just got to be a bit too much; for all its merits, 2003’s Austral Alien skewed toward both the tiresome and the tired. This trying-too-hard conundrum affects most prog-oriented bands (remember Rush, circa Roll the Bones?), but the antidote is always an obvious, very effective one: Simplify, man!
Which is just what Alchemist do on their sixth studio full-length, minimizing the synths and mellower excursions in favor of a much more direct approach, and while the end result bears even more striking similarities to the Killing Joke of the last decade, it’s nonetheless a bracing return to form. Rodney Holder’s jackhammer snare brings an edginess to crunchfest “Tongues and Knives,” 6/8 groove meets thunderous, primitive beats on the throttling “Wrapped in Guilt” and the very Killing Joke-esque “Nothing in No Time” kicks off with a terrific intro by guitarist Ray Torkington, echoing the goth-tinged sounds of KJ riffmeister Geordie. Tripsis is especially strong during its latter half, as the contagious “Substance for Shadow,” the rampaging “God Shaped Hole” and Pandemonium knock-off “Degenerative Bleeding” prove these geezers are still capable of a good idea or two. —Adrien Begrand
