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Spylacopa: Spylacopa

What do you get when you combine one part The Dillinger Escape Plan (Greg Puciato), one part Candiria (John LaMacchia), one part Isis (Jeff Caxide) and one part Made Out of Babies/Battle of Mice (Julie Christmas)? Well, you have the supergroup project called Spylacopa, who are now releasing their self-titled debut EP on Rising Pulse Records. Not quite metal, not quite post-rock, but certainly something along the lines of avant-garde flavored rock, Spylacopia certainly mix it up here on this 5-song EP. Puciato's tortured screams and wailings work well alongside the gentle vocals of Christmas on the manic opener "Haunting A Ghost", LaMacchia's textured guitar work providing plenty of the fireworks for this otherwise varied opening cut. More of the same can be heard on the raucous "Bloodletting", giving way to melodic piano on the gentle "Together We Become Forever". They come back with raging yet funky extreme metal on "Staring At the Sound", a ripping number with crunch riffs, pounding drum work, and lots of effective vocals from Puciato, in what is no doubt the song that shows the most promise for this ensemble on this EP. The closer "I Should Have Known You Would" takes an almost Pink Floyd meets Isis approach to atmospheric & ambient rock, dreamy vocals meshing with Dave Gilmour inspired guitar work and plenty of dark overtones.

As strong as this is, it just seems like the tip of the iceberg. We obviously know of the pedigree of these folks, so now that we have a taste of what they can do, let's hope next time around they can give us a full blast of the potential that's shown here.


Track Listing
1) Haunting A Ghost
2) Bloodletting
3) Together We Become Forever
4) Staring at the Sound
5) I Should Have Known You Would

Added: January 7th 2009
Reviewer: Pete Pardo
Score:
Related Link: Bands MySpace Page
Hits: 8279
Language: english

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Spylacopa: Spylacopa
Posted by Ken Pierce, SoT Staff Writer on 2009-01-07 07:02:02
My Score:

Let's take a single member from The Dillinger Escape Plan, Candiria, Isis and Made Out Of Babies and put them into a group of their own to see what comes of it. Of course to many of you the very idea of such a thing might be making you scratch your head in wonder or curiosity about what purpose this would even serve but when you start spinning the EP from Spylacopa you will be pleasantly surprised by the results. I had to admit that I approached this one with a little bit of hesitation myself but since I knew the capabilities of the individual members from seeing their respective bands I had to say that I was intrigued. The five song EP presents music from a band that is far different than anything that you have heard these musicians do before and in all honesty it is really, really good. Formed by guitarist John LaMacchia (Candiria), the band features Greg Puciato (TDEP), Jeff Caxide (Isis) and Julie Christmas (Made Out Of Babies) who together deliver elements of Alt-Metal with doses of Psychedelic, Proto-Punk and Progressive tossed in for good measure. It's an interesting listen to say the least and while it starts off with a thrashing on "Haunting A Ghost", Puciato does not maintain a screaming register for the whole track and instead sings in melodic tones during the chorus break which shifts the gears of the track very much. There is great guitar work by LaMacchia here and the drumming is thunderous without question. We first hear Christmas during the next track "Bloodletting" and she does a cool duet of sorts with Greg and at a couple of points reminded me of Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons. The chorus is a big one with a crunching riff that just has a lot of atmosphere to it. "Together We Become Forever" struck me as being very unique for the instrumental tracks lulls you into security with a beautiful piano piece that leads you into some airy synthesizers. It was a tune that put you into a different head almost and I liked this because it showed you just how creative this group was and how diverse their sound is. I took "Staring At The Sound" at the heaviest and most complex of the compositions because of the flipping around of the grooves and breakdowns they were doing. This was probably my favorite of the five numbers with the closing "I Should Have Known You Would" coming in as a close second because it sounded more like a Pink Floyd tune than anything I would have found on a heavy album.

Each of the individual members bands are very active but my hope is that more attention is paid to this project because it would be a crime if the concert attending public didn't get to enjoy this in the live sense. For an EP I had to rate this as something you should definitely look into for it is rich in its musical colors and textures and delivers a band that is trying to be different in a world that finds too many bands offering up the same old thing time and time again. Good luck gang, I can't wait to hear more from this project.




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