Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's music practically defines the MIO genre.
This is Metal In Opposition to that industry's accepted norms
-- it is in-your-face avant garde and cocks a snoot at all conventions
associated with the established, traditions of metal.
In Glorious Times is dense, intense, extremely technical, very complex
and seriously quirky - and it sounds like nothing you've heard before. One
of the primary characteristics of this album is the many sections of controlled
chaos -- dissonant blocks of sound with mixed time signatures, which yield a
challenging listen.
If you enjoyed classic King Crimson's THRAK or Red, or any of
their heaviest releases, you may enjoy this. That doesn't mean it sounds at all
the same - In Glorious Times is easily twice as heavy as Crimson's
heaviest - but it shares many characteristics. The sometimes jarring dissonance,
the unresolved harmonies, the tension, and the challenge it presents.
The previous Sleepytime releases were always odd, a bit heavy, and hard to
categorize. This one falls more squarely into the metal camp - in fact, there
are also far more traditional extreme metal elements than Sleepytime Gorilla
Museum's previous records, and in a first for the band, there's some genuine
death metal growling here. Track 2 "Helpless Corpses Enactment" is pure death
metal. Very sophisticated compared to most practitioners of that genre, to be
sure, but death metal nonetheless. For those progressive music fans who just
can't take the so-called 'cookie monster' growls, just program your CD player to
skip track 2 and you'll be happy. But if you're comfortable with death
metal, that song might be one of the better examples of death metal you'll hear
all year.
The crystalline female vocals we enjoyed on the band's prior albums are sadly
not as evident here, and those odd voiceovers that characterized the last 2
records are present on this new release as well - in fact those voiceovers are
becoming a Sleepytime Gorilla Museum trademark.
So In Glorious Times has tons of appeal for avant garde prog and metal
fans. Let's hope it isn't too extreme for the prog fans, and it's probably too
complex for the traditional metalheads. It deserves a huge audience in both
camps though - and it deserves its full 5-star rating.
Track Listing:
1. The Companions
2. Helpless Corpses Enactment
3. Puppet Show
4. Formicary
5. Angle of Repose
6. Ossuary
7. The Salt Crown
8. The Only Dance
9. The Greenless Wreath
10.The Widening Eye
11.The Putrid Refrain
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