3 out of 5

Label: Profound Love Records

Produced By: Colin Marston

So at some point, Dysrhythmia, to my ears, became Colin Marston’s baby.  And no, of course not: in the many projects in which he’s involved, I’m not claiming that Marston is by any means the solo songwriter.  However, he is a force to be reckoned with, and I can only imagine it’s thus appealing to have the other players step up their game to match all the technical wibberdy-dibberdy.  Dysrhythmia pre-Marston was metal rock, and recording for Relapse Records made sense.  When Marston joined for ‘Barriers & Passages,’ it was a fucking slab of awesome, stepping up the wank angle of the band’s music just enough to push it out of a somewhat more standard instrumental range.  And then there was a break, and Marston became Marston.  Go check out his recording history.  Go ahead; I’ll wait here for a few years while you realize he’s been in like 1,000 bands.  …Now, chances are you’ve heard some similarities in sounds during that tour.  It’s by no means a bad thing.  Marston’s music – and those he records with – can produce some jaw-dropping stuff.  And if you take something like ‘Arctopus,’ which started as a precision metal thing, it works because that’s what they’ve always been.  Which is where we get into some dangerous territory about limiting when and how a band can “change” their sound, but personally, beyond, say, that first album where your band always sounds like a high school version of itself, if, several records in, the original band sound is no longer all that audible… I’d maybe say it’s time to change the name.  The name is somewhat synonymous with the sound, and while a group SHOULD evolve as a unit during their time together, this (again, in my logic) is different from shifting gears.

Dysrhythmia can sort of get away with it because, y’know, it’s instrumental metal, right?  Isn’t that what it still is?  Sort of.  Psychic Maps still held on to some moments of rock in its runtime, enough so that you got a sense of range while listening to it, and within that range, I think you could still spot a ‘sound’ that gelled with the previous albums.  Those moments are on ‘Test of Submission’ as well, but they are few and far between, sandwich amongst 8 tracks of intense precisionry that, recorded in Marston’s very clean, flat style, leaves no note unheard but also ends up washing over the ears a bit too easily (assuming you’re attuned to this kinda stuff, anyhow).  ‘Running Towards the End,’ in the disc’s middle, is, frankly, a perfect track, and does call back to the rocking moments of ‘Pretest,’ very much thanks to the fact that it just fucking slows down for a few minutes.  And once your ears are warmed up to the pace, opener ‘In Secrecy’ does do good job of touring through the different elements that make up these songs, but otherwise, ‘Submission’ is an incredibly technically proficient album, but it lacks ebb and flow to make it really hit your hard.  I do think, thematically, it works together impressively; themes are clearly woven into the tracks, and thus, despite my criticisms, there’s more of a ‘story’ here than on previous discs, but I’m not sure – unless you’re in it for the wizardry – that this is the album to rope you into the group.

Still, these guys are worth listening to, and all of their projects are worth watching.  It’s a corner of the metal world that keeps figuring out ways to rearrange all those notes and beats and play them at inhumanly crazy paces and I’m sure these bands are a hoot live.  But we don’t mind power chords, and so I wouldn’t mind if Dysrhythmia slows it up a bit more often if they put out another record.