Blotted Science — The Machinations Of Dementia

"Welcome to the laboratory. Here, we delve deep into the inner workings of the physical mind. You will observe, as we have, that our findings are not always pleasant, and indeed ofttimes plunge into the realm of disorder and chaos."

These words in the booklet prepare you for a trip of complex and inventive metal, which doesn't abide rules of songwriting per se, but remains surprisingly digestable. Relatively speaking of course, set by the standards of the resume of guitarist Ron Jarzombek. Bands like Watchtower and Spastic Ink have always been filled with more breaks, fills and riffs than many bands come up with in a lifetime. The big accomplishment in these works has always been the art of making music of all these strange concoctions. Ron has the tendency to explain his odd ideas in the booklet of his CD and reading them is funny, but make you fear some cerebral workout rather than music. The crushed skull on the sleeve of the debut of his new project Blotted Science seems to suggest you should forget about your brain.

The rather bloody sleeve also seems to point into the direction of death metal, the medical linernotes (not musictheory this time) also remind of Carcass and the endless stream of medical grindbands they spawned. Although he considered death metal technically appealing, Ron says to never been able to get past the cookiemonster vocals. Now he hooked up with Cannibal Corpse bassplayer Alex Webster to create The Machinations Of Dementia. Joined by Behold…The Arctopus drummer Charlie Zeleny this is clearly inspired by death metal, but I wouldn't say it's a real death metal album. There are no vocals and the material is quite "Jarzombek". A little more doublebass drums and an occasional blastbeat don't make this death metal just yet.

The sixteen tracks fit in the line of Jarzombek's solo-album Solitarily Speaking Of Theoretical Confinement, but with more power. A stronger sense of it being a band at work. The most logical comparison I can come up with would be Buckethead more recent works (since he started working with Dan Monti on The Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell, to be precise), although less repetitive and not as sparse. Like most of Ron Jarzombek's projects this is something that analytic minds are likely to enjoy and dissect. I do believe, being not much of analyst myself at all, this again can be enjoyed on less brainy merits. There's always a nice melody or riff that will grab you. As bizarre as some of the constructions may seem, there's also some sort of narrative quality to the stream of musical events that will take you by the hand to lead you into a unique and enjoyable metallic soundworld.