Coprofago
Unhortodox Creative Criteria

I thought it was just another Grindgore band. I thought I would dismiss them after a couple of listens. But, I was wrong, by Maroni's beard, how wrong I was. Coprofago may not have had taste in choosing their name, but they have plenty to offer when it comes to music.

It had been since 1995 that no one did anything similar, the year the second work of a certain Swedish group was released; that group was Meshuggah, that work was "Destroy, Erase, Improve", that genre was... what was that genre? Everyone has given it a different name, there are those who call it Techno Thrash, others Techno Death, some dismiss it as "Crossover": the reality is that it was a strange genre, so strange that it couldn't be cataloged in any way, so strange that even now I wouldn't know how to fit it into a single verbal vector. Meshuggah were a mix between Metal (be it Thrash or Death) and Fusion: what's the connection? Nothing, absolutely nothing, but if Cynic had done it, why couldn't Meshuggah do something similar? With a jazz background, it wasn't hard for them to write solos that seem like reworkings of Brecker for guitar, or to compose using only odd time signatures. A few personal additions, such as using tunings so low as to turn one of the two guitars into part of the rhythm section (obviously out of sync with the drums), and the result was a new genre was born.

What do the Coprofago have to do with Meshuggah? Simple, they are their direct heirs, too bad they took their inheritance before Meshuggah were dead which means our Swedish friends find themselves beaten at their own game by some guys who probably believed in Santa Claus back when "Destroy, Erase, Improve" came out. After "Chaosphere", Thomas Haake's group has followed a downward curve that led them to the flop of "Catch 33" (which, by the way, is a secret tribute to Hypocrisy). But let's continue with our Coprofago; in short, these five Chilean guys, noticing that no one had ever had the guts to pick up from Meshuggah, thought it best to do so themselves, aiming to recover their best period. Armed with unbeatable technical skills and having completely free space after their Mentors' "restyling", they debuted with the just adequate "Images Of Despair" only to shock the whole world with "Genesis" and confirm themselves (without repeating) with "Unhortodox Creative Criteria".

The recipe changes slightly from the past; there are more keyboards, always soft and strictly with a marginal function, and the Jazz-Fusion component becomes more important to the point where almost half of the songs completely abandon metal to focus on this other genre. And trust me, there's enough here to make the greats in both domains look pale. The other part of the songs remains in full Meshuggah Style: the riffing, sharply bifurcated, consists of a strictly rhythmic guitar (and by this term, I mean what I explained above) and another that follows completely different lines. In every song, there are thus three rhythms; the one of the drums, absolutely schizoid and strictly in odd times, one of a guitar and the bass, and finally that of the other guitar, generally closer to a form of melody. The riffing is strongly influenced by the Thrash, Death, and I would even say Mathcore schools, while the rhythms are decidedly atypical and more directly hark back to Jazz, albeit endowed with the violence of metal ones.

The voice is practically indistinguishable from that of Meshuggah's singer, a cross between a clean growl and the unclean scream of a Palermo fan. The bass lines are splendid, at certain moments you even doubt that it's an electric bass and suspect that it's a double bass. However, compared to their Swedish godfathers, Coprofago are infinitely more airy, rarefied, soothing, and relaxed; few nightmare atmospheres and those few dampened by songs or simply more calming passages. This does not renounce reflection, on the contrary, always stimulated by our compositions. Tracks like "The Inborn Mechanics", "Hostile Silent Raptures", and "Isolated Through Multiplicity" leave no doubt about the value of this ensemble.

Great abilities, great class; "Unhortodox Creative Criteria" is not just for metalheads, it's for everyone who loves good music.