Review Summary: AN absolutely monolithic debut, littered with more than enough technical riffage to please even the most pedantic of extreme metal fans.
When it comes to technical music, there are a few bands who consistently impress with their releases. The Dillinger Escape Plan, Starring Janet Leigh and Meshuggah are a few examples of bands who have pushed the boundaries of extremity in terms of heaviness and technicality to their limits. Ion Dissonance are certainly another band that possess an insurmountable degree of talent and virtuosity. Breathing Is Irrelevant is the band's debut album and right from the start, it purposefully punishes the listener with an insane amount of guitar wizardry, percussion madness and vocal monstrosity. Standout track of the album has to be
The Budd Dwyer Effect. Riff after riff of sumptous quality is laid out behind some truly fierce vocals. The guitars bounce between tempos and time signatures, grooves and even some truly monstrous breakdowns. The best part of the song has to be the utterly perfect breakdown where he guitars utilize tri-tones. I can safely say that this is one of the best songs of it's genre, for absolute certainty.
[b]Failure In The Process Of Identifying A Dream{/b] begins with a short clean guitar passage before launching the listener headfirst into a cacophonous mish-mash of atonality, brutality and downright nastiness. It can be said that Ion Dissonance could be classified as one of the heaviest and most beastly bands around. Even if at first songs can be a little difficult to distinguish between, everything here is impressive and well written. Other highlights include the superbly well crafted
The Girl Next Door Is Always SCreaming. Immense chugging interspersed with passages of pure technical madness is what is on offer and it sounds monolithic.
Every track on Breathing Is Irrelevant displays a certain level of sheer quality. There are literally hundreds of riffs flying around all over the place, complimented by some more thanm competent drumming. Even the bass shines through - it is clearly definable and branches out of the typical "follow the guitars" pattern adopted by many modern metal bands. The album closes with yet another highlight in the form of
A Regular Dose of Azure. The atmosphere is the darkest of the dark, with some ominously whispered vocals over the top of a moderately steady tempo - literally a slew of concrete-esque guitar riffs that are extravagantly heavy.
In conclusion, if you are looking for extreme metal, than this album is your friend. The whole record is littered with technicality, brutality, groove, speed, breakdowns and more. I can't imagine how long it would take to learn a single track of guitar, but heck, a whole album like this?! Check this out if you are a fan of brutal music. You can't go wrong with this one.
