Infected Mushroom
Army of Mushrooms

After the multi-awarded "Vicious Delicious" and the master-PISS "Legend of the Black Shawarma", the Israeli band Infected Mushroom returns with a new, promising (at least by the title, "Army of Mushrooms") album that could be decisive in terms of the musical "look" change already foreshadowed by its predecessor.

The premonitions of "Black Shawarma" were correct: the duo/no-longer-a-duo has now abandoned the old psy-trance that made them known throughout the first decade of the '00s, instead dedicating themselves to a Dubstep combined with Jumpstile rhythms & similar. Infected Mushroom has changed: their musical offering no longer includes the electronic atmospheres of "Albibeno" or "Elation Station", the sick melodies of "I'm the supervisor", the brain-hammering riffs of "Becoming Insane", and any others you can think of...

Their musical maturity achieved in psy-trance, they wanted to exploit in delving into a new musical genre (specifically: new for them to play, not for us to listen to), to execute a new compositional exploration in an electronic context.

However, the development of the various tracks (12 plus a bonus track) starts to become redundant, pathetic, outdated (come on, Christ! still using those drum loop transitions?! DJ Fargetta was doing that in the '90s!), poorly utilized, and poorly developed.

Let me explain further.

By "poorly utilized" I mean that the tracks aren't that hideous. The presence of musically educated hands is very noticeable, particularly behind the synths. The harmonic modulations are certainly less banal than their "dubstepper" peers who I don't even want to mention now, to avoid getting irritated.

Just listen to the harmonic progression of the opener "Never Mind" to realize that we're not dealing with people composing by ear, pressing random notes on the keyboard, and finding a basic riff that could be played with a middle school's recorder.

The sounds are also well-created, fully recalling the group's tonalities from previous years. However, what diminishes all this melodic research is certainly the very development of the songs.

Despite the numerous riff and tempo changes present in many tracks (I refer you once again to the aforementioned "Never Mind" as an example), the result turns out to be very predictable and not very engaging. These are the usual transitions that the Mushrooms have been proposing to us for the past ten years.

All of this, then, under a Dubstep guise.

"Army of Mushrooms" is thus an album that, unfortunately, does little justice to the Israeli duo's attempt at a stylistic shift, making them fall back not into a possible "avant-garde", but into a mere fashionable musical change.

Despite everything, it is an album that should definitely be listened to, at least in part, because, from a melodic and "audiophile" point of view, it certainly has a lot to teach.