4 out of 5

Label: Robot High School

Produced by: The Octopus Project

“Stick to what you do best,” we might say to our favorite band, preferring their more melodic phase, or before they got that new vocalist, or when they were punk, or whatever.  Octopus Project have forever seemed intent on being the exception to any genre label rule, though, not so much aiming for stylistic mash-ups as just learning to excel at the whole rigmarole: at singing, at thrashing, at grooving, at swooning, at bleeping and buzzing.  Extending that, this also isn’t a band who writes a folk song, or a metal song: they write Octopus Project tracks, which just happen to encompass all these different potential elements.

And if you’d asked me, prior to Memory Mirror, what I thought their “best” was, even considering the above evaluation I would have leaned toward my preference for their instrumental electro-tinged tracks.

But then they blast out of the gates with this album, where almost every track has vocals, where almost every track is more organic sounding than electro, and I no longer know what to tell you.  This is yet another example of OP proceeding forth with the mentality of trying a new spin on their formula, and yet again, they knock it out of the park.  Flipping back and forth between vocal duties, MM has a rather percussion heavy vibe, with speed snare rushes propelling us through bouncy harmonies, instant-head bobbing riffs, and fantastically raw – yet polished – production.  On occasion the energy gets the best of them and the tracks feel slightly unfinished, with the latter half of the album fading somewhat in urgency, but by and large it’s delivered with such momentum that you’re gasping for breath while that consideration forms.

No way I could have predicted the existence of this disc from Identification Parade days, and yet, at no point would I have doubted the group’s ability to deliver such a thing.