Pierre Vervloesem
Rude

THE REVIEW

I tried with Pain of Salvation, Porcupine Tree, Opeth, even Tool... nothing to do, prog-metal makes me sick. Yet, the fusion of these two genres that the name suggests should create something that guides my spirit towards mature and articulated emotions, with strength and adrenaline. So why does it come naturally to me to define it as a limp hybrid?

Chasing my current tendency towards more aggressive sounds, I walk other paths and find myself searching for those musical realities that are part of avant-rock, rock in opposition, and progressive derivations that tend to incorporate metal characteristics or are otherwise charged with that aggressiveness and energy that commonly manifests in the markedly distorted tones of guitar riffs.

The ground is very fertile, and there are various pleasant things to listen to, but this album in particular caught my attention because it sounds like what an instrumental prog-metal album might sound like if such a genre had never been invented, or rather, if that name had never been used inappropriately.

Vervloesem has a strange surname, he's Belgian (which in these realms always bodes well), and comes from a good and particular avant-rock band with a curious name, X Legged Sally. Accompanying Vervloesem's guitar are three even more unknown guys in a classic drum, bass, and keyboard formation, to give us a great album that I would provocatively say, sticks a broom up the ass of progressive metal as it is known today.

Vervloesem is an exemplary subject and duly bows to the court of the crimson king. He seems to pay homage to him in "Born to be white" and cites him in "Greener," as he cites, I would say with cinematic expertise, other musicians, styles, and genres which I will leave to each one's sensitivity to identify.

At times, it recalls the productions of Bill Laswell but, forgive my lack, it is unclear to me who produced "Rude." The suspicion that he had a hand in it is further strengthened when I discover that Laswell produced two albums for X Legged Sally. Certainly, the most "metal" creature of Axiom, Praxis with Buckethead, has never reached these levels.

"Rude" was released in 2005. It is not a perfect album, but it has the rare merit of being an album with varied content, assembled in a surprisingly homogeneous form, a successful emulsion of different situations where the feeling of déjà vu, a certain familiarity, is actually revealed to be just an illusion, a magic trick.

"Rude" is not a progressive metal album. Fortunately.

Et voilà