Behold…The Arctopus – Nano-nucleonic Cyborg Summoning (Vothoc)
Instrumental math metal meets math rock. Complicated, instrumentals with lots of metal sounds but also pretty, melodic math rock and post rock sounds. Think the Oxes, Meshuggah, and Yes but with grindcore blast beats thrown in once in a while. Surprisingly the guitar player is Colin Martson, the man behind Infidel!/Castro? and he’s playing a 12 string guitar and not a normal 12 string guitar. This one has 12 separated strings tuned to go as low as a bass.
**1. Hold on, this is a wild ride of a track. It starts out heavy, quick and pure metal. He dances all over the neck of the guitar for a couple minutes. There is a beautiful middle section with mostly just guitar tapping before returning to a sound that reminds me a bit of The Fucking Champs. Then as they quiet down for the last 2 minutes with a pretty guitar solo, the guitar tone sounds a lot like Meshuggah.
2. Quiet droning guitar to begin with extended use of the volume knob. Then out of nowhere, discordant, heavy guitar. Ends with a drum solo?
**3. Less metal but no less complex. Oxes meets Yes. A number of start/stop sections and what appears to be a sense of humor. I wonder if these music geeks think they are being funny? There is a section with a slow chug, a section with clean, pretty, individual notes on guitar, a noisy section, and a handful of other sounds.
Wow. -mph