Holy Moly, Mother Mary, this record is out there!

This is where Mamga meets Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, it is where Squonk Opera meets Children Of Bodom, it is where Broadway meets dark metal. Here, performance art intersects with dark goth music, and modern avant garde opera (yes, the classical kind) enthusiastically breeds with modern Scandawegian metal

Expect this release to feature prominently in many album-of-the-year lists ... and also to be in many lists of the worst records - because for most people, In A Flesh Aquarium will be a love-it-or-hate-it affair, with no room for ambivalence. This is avant garde metal that is more Prog (capital P deliberate) than any metal acts you're likely to hear for a long time - this is progressive in every sense of the word.

Many people will never 'get' In A Flesh Aquarium, many more will learn to appreciate it after many listens, and for a few demented reviewers it will take just one track to fall head-over-heels for its eclectic mix of classical and brain-melting discord, its very operatic, psychotic ingenuity, its unique eccentricity, its wonderfully innovative attack on anything that dares call itself metal.

It's even a stretch to call it metal, although we'll use that label only because of the limited amount of controlled death-metal growling, and a rhythm section that revolves around double-bass and heavy power chords and a 9 (yes, that's a 'nine') string bass guitar. But you could just as easily call it heavy RIO or post-modern opera. This is as operatic and avant garde prog as it is metal. We'll have to invent a new genre for this stuff - perhaps thinking man's metal, or Metal In Opposition - MIO - metal's equivalent of prog's Rock In Opposition genre.

At first blush the instrumentation sounds chaotic and uncontrolled, but it's actually as tight as a drum, very technical, an exercise in modern composition. Besides the metal lineup there are piano, clarinet, cello and sax and lines, there are occasional electronic and choral female vocal effects, and dissonant violins thread their way through the mix in a discordant satire of anything approaching old fashioned melody. The female vocals are an important component of the music, and provide a stark contrast to the wild demonic growls.

If there's a criticism, it's that after an hour the over-the-top theatrics seem to go on a bit, and a few more approachable moments would provide a welcome breathing space.

Based in Toronto, Canada, the band's name is unexpecT (note the odd capitalization) and they take whacky stage names in the same way as the Norwegian black metal acts do. So the lineup is Syriak, ChaotH, ExoD, Le Bateleur, Artagoth, Leìlindel, Landryx (again, note the odd capitalization.) And the track titles are off the wall too - with song names like "Feasting Fools", "Silence_011010701", "Megalomaniac Trees" and "Another Dissonant Chord". So they're apparently marketing themselves to an audience that will be impressed by that sort of thing. The more grown-up prog and metal listeners will ignore the theatrics and focus on the otherworldly music itself, the pure classical discipline, the tension and the drama, and with tense anticipation, we will watch the challenges that unexpecT has presented to the metal world.

So The End records has found another genre-defying band. It's always a pleasure to watch that label - they have a knack for discovering glittering gems like this one.

Get this CD - and file it next to Sleepytime Gorilla Museum in your collection.