4 out of 5

Label: Suicide Squeeze

Produced By: Alaska B (recorded and engineered)

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan may read like an art project, but the results of their first EP far surpass the kind of limitations or criticisms such a title might imply, producing an epic effect that earns the right to break from traditional band structures to be a self-styled “Noh-wave” collective.  YT // ST is essentially a 5-track build-up up to a big, two-track conclusion, and that does mean the lead-in has a bit of an incomplete feel to it, like the point never arrives, and that the ending drags on for a bit too long, but the thundering drums and swooning vocals are a mystical force that sweeps you up for the journey, making these qualifications rather unimportant in the grand scheme of enjoying the album.  At the same time, the best moments are those that feel like fully realized songs – the way ‘Queens’ whisps between chanting vocals and crunchy riffs, or ‘Hoshi Neko’s (maybe) bi-lingual pop oddity – though the explosions of sounds that erupt elsewhere, particularly the rumble caused by the concluding ‘A Star Over Pureland’ and ‘Crystal Fortress Over the Sea Of Trees’ are such intense, well-produced cacophonies that it pushes you along effortlessly.  So on reflection, yes, it’d be nice to get beginnings and endings (which happened moreso on the album to follow YT // ST), but before you brush off artsy bands, listen to this album as a whole puzzle instead of song-by-song, and you might bristle (if yer resistant to music-makers who met at art school) at how much of a compelling unified front is presented, and how effectively it steamrolls over you with its mystically dreamy and heavy sound.