Yakuza — Sutra

Chicago progressive experimental metal outfit Yakuza has a long history dating back to their debut album in 2000.  For what appears to be their 7th official album,  Finland's Svart Records has released Sutra.  Shifting between subgenres nearly every song, it is truly difficult to classify this band's music, though clever, well-paced songwriting makes it immediately satisfying and meaningful, as well.

With a vast, reverberant wall of melancholic distortion and comfortable midrange tempo, the first piece, "2is1", sounds similar in tone to creators of epics like Neurosis or Godspeed You, Black Emperor.  This group generally chooses to create four to six minute concise pieces rather than ten to twenty-minute sojourns, however, and it turns out this group's cinematic passages generally function as interludes between faster-paced metal material.

The second track, titled "Alice", makes it clear that there's a large variety of influences at play here, as suddenly none of the post-rock comparisons seem apt.  This is something of a progressive groove metal tune with a very 90's flavor, a style of songwriting I might compare to Death, Atheist, or Candiria.  The guitar work on this album reveals itself to be multifaceted and ambitious.  Scalar melodic percolations emerge with nods to modern post-hardcore as well as heavy influence from classic metal and formative extreme metal.

The vocals, which are melodic throughout, come from classic and alternative metal idioms, a singing style comparable to groups like Disturbed or 40 Below Summer, or to Ozzy at times, fitting for a band whose debut was released in 2000.  Indeed, as much as they recall extreme metal, this band exists in a more tuneful, accessible realm of songwriting much of the time.   As someone who grew up in that era, it's often a sound I miss, and this group perfectly captures the driving power and moody, gothic introspection of the best of that scene, something I often wished was paired with more ambitious or progressive instrumentation, as it is with this group.   

It could be described, at times, as alternative metal that still has the intelligence and chops for fans of extreme metal.   There's a good amount of satisfyingly direct chugging groove metal riffs, again in a 90's flavor, recalling bands like Machine Head or Nothingface that rode the line between extreme metal and more mainstream metal.  This group's songs seem to go all the places many alternative metal bands never could, limited as they were by tropes of verse/chorus structure and basic lyrics about relationships.  

Yakuza's Sutra is an album that could be called stoner metal, heavy metal, progressive death metal, groove metal, gothic metal and alternative metal with equal accuracy.  More importantly, it's a showcase of consistently clever songwriting, and has a gritty, live immediacy that feels like you're watching the band play in a small club or bar, right in front of you.  Anyone yearning for bygone eras of metal will feel like they've never gone, hearing this recording, and yet it is no retread, sounding as ambitious and multifaceted as any of the classics.