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Scientist - 10100II00101
Released by: Hell Comes Home
Released on: December 11th, 2015.
Purchase From Band Camp
One of the great pleasures of running a review site is when you get something unexpected sent over to write up and, going in blind, you find that it clicks. This happens all too infrequently but thankfully it was the case with the latest release from experimental Chicago based metal act, Scientist, and their new album 10100II00101. The band is comprised of guitarist, vocalist and founder Eric Plonka (Yakuza), guitarist/vocalist Patrick Auclair (Taken By The Sun), drummer Justin Cape (Taken By The Sun) and bass player Mathew Milligan (Making Ghosts) and their sound is a fantastic mix of technical, experimental and progressive metal sounds.
The Singularity kicks the album off, beginning with some ambient noise and some feedback before the band kicks in, all at once, with a polished, technical sound set off by the vocals, which contrast in interesting ways as they're completely unhinged. There's also some serious riffing in here too, it's reminiscent of early Mastodon at times and in the best way possible.
From here, Siege Capture Control, an epic track at just short of ten minutes in length, opens with some mellow sounds that soon morph into feedback that grows from subtle to flat out obnoxious before the doomy sludge rolls over you. The vocals are aggressive over the slow burn musicianship, creating some weird contrast (you almost expect something more akin to crooning here and you definitely don't get it). It builds and gets more aggressive as it progresses and it's a pretty compelling track, one of the more unusual but appealing songs on the album. The Lighthouse takes things in a more melodic direction but not at the cost of intensity or weight, as this track barrels over your after a somewhat calmer opening assault. The drumming on this track really impresses but the vocals sort of come at you out of left field and create some interesting atmosphere. Baptistina again opens with some weird ambient noise, creating an odd atmosphere and tone off of which the band uses some samples and then over which they layer down some atrociously heavy guitar and bass work. One of, if not the, heaviest tracks on the record this is definitely one that stands out on an impressively consistent and solid record.
Luminal is one the short side of things here, clocking in at under three minutes, but it starts off with some more killer drumming and a bit of instrumental experimentation before some decidedly tortured sounding vocals move up in the mix. This is a creepy track, it's ominous and sinister and sticks with you for that reason. It also segues perfectly into Gravity Well, which opens with some quiet, calm playing overtop of what at first sound like weird random bird noises. It shifts gears just before the three minute mark and from there heads straight on into more traditional metal territory but it's pretty wild how the band marks those shifts in tone on this track.
Limb is one of the shortest songs on the record at two minutes and thirty five seconds. Like a lot of the other songs on the album it's got some strange instrumental thing going on to start, and that continues throughout (there are no vocals here) and it then leads into the more intense Physician Heal Thyself. This is immediately more upbeat than that which came before, but not in the way you'd expect. The vocals go for intensity and use a bizarre range from the start, with the technical string work behind them hitting a nice tempo about forty-five seconds in. But then they go back to the opening riff, shifting back and forth as the song progresses over just short of five minutes
Orbital uses droney, ambient noise for the first two minutes to get you into a nice, comfy spot before kicking you in the face with heavy riffs and fast, albeit mathy and very precise guitar work that progresses in interesting ways until it ends, vocal free, just shy of eight minutes in length. Bloodless Breathless takes to fuzzier territory than the band has explored on any other part of this record but around two minutes in that fuzz dials down and we're back into some pretty intense playing that comes at you fast, hard and heavy. The album finishes off with the title track, 10100II00101, a quick one at two minutes and thirty-four seconds on the clock. It's another ambient piece with odd samples playing overtop of trippy playing and it ends the record proper on just the right note.
