Review Summary: The other review on here is short, this one explains the album more.. Gorguts mindfucking Lovecraft!
A plague of digital locusts swells amongst discordant waves of sound. Swelling walls of pestilence gnash until hypnotically repeated heavy guitar riffs breaks through building with syncopated drums, until the vocals kick in and the gaping maw of death stares back. So begins Mountains Perched Like Beasts Awaiting The Attack, the first track from Quasi Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes, a mouthful of a title, and the sophomore album by Florida’s own Gigan. A trio bent on exploring a sound that can only be described as psychedelically noise infused space themed death grind. Though none of this could possibly be discerned from the cover art; it shows only two hooded monks standing on a plane of water and odd colors.
After their crushing debut I was very interested to see what direction the new album would go in. While the last album was a complex collection of technical metal mixed with a grindcore feel to the song structure it offered little in the way of trippy moments beyond standout psychedelic track Hiding Behind The House Of Mirrors. The new album is everything you could ask of a band that is still growing its sound. More of the crazy technical music they are known for, but with a much more straightforward style of death metal as the signature core sound. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t stop and start numerous times throughout the song as they usually do, it just means their songwriting has vastly improved. On the last album after repeated listens I could still barely tell most of the tracks apart. On this one every track seems to have more of its own identity and structure. Whether it’s the purely speedy tracks, or the slow lumbering tracks, the music on this album winds and weaves its way through a number of tempos and ideas. Some are lightning fast from start to finish, others build up from doomy atmospheric territory in a way similar to Immolation; and others feature beautiful slow hypnotic repeated guitar soundscapes in between the metal moments. The guitar and bass were written and performed by sole founding member Eric Hersemann who plays very strange discordant riffs similar to Gorguts. The bass while not always audible is good when it’s up in the mix usually follows along with the sinister guitar riffs. The vocals courtesy of John Collet are standard metal screams and cookie monster growls, which is why I love the plethora of vocal effects used throughout the album. Many times it’s simply added distortion but they also use a vocodor on two tracks to create what sounds like robots attacking people. New drummer Kaish Doan more than fills the shoes of his predecessor while adding more variety to the slower tempo sections. He can play blindingly fast and blast with the best of them, but truly is at his best during his slower playing. During the slower parts of songs He often throws in interesting fills and plays in a jazzy swing type manner.
While most of the albums time vacillates between extreme tempo changes and relentless ferocity, the noisy atmospherics and psychedelic moments are truly the icing on the cake of an album that rewards its listeners more and more with every listen.
