Having been around since 2012, Parisian djent practitioners Stömb, seem to have flown under the radar in terms of the scant availability of anything really concrete about the band aside from a handful of reviews and an under-construction website that offers no tangible information on the four-piece. Maybe this flagrant and deliberate avoidance of social media presence is all a ruse to create an aura or sense of mystery to the band? Or maybe its nothing more than a band that plays in an overcrowded genre, struggling to get some airtime, and failing to draw a breath as they sink to the bottom of the barrel named dance inflected djent and slowly overtime, macerating in their own technical juices and pedal boards.
I put my metaphorical (and physical) hand up for this because, against my better judgement, I like this genre, despite it going slightly against by own preconceptions on overly technical musicality. My own musical endeavours have always ascribed to the more DIY ethic and focus on the spirit and terroir of the music rather than the technicalities of the playing. I am somewhat of a contradiction though because for every band like say Fugazi or The Chariot that full slap bang into that home grown do it yourself ethic, I find myself drawn like a magpie to a nest full of young starlings, to bands such as Meshuggah, Tesseract or Monuments, whose technical prowess is a large part of their image and success but they also all crush it on both recorded output and within the live environment. Now this genre may leave some people cold, being as it can be, calculated, curated, and refined, where each song as been pro tooled and tabulated to within an inch of its life, but there is a heart beating somewhere within the cold and mechanical nature of the tech metal genre.
So, to Stömb, and this their third full length release. Given my reticence to fully embrace this genre, what to make of it? Technically, it’s first rate as you would expect from any right-minded protagonist existing within this frame of reference. It’s all clockwork, staccato guitars with syncopated double bass drums, set against the backdrop of ominous keyboards and fragrant bursts of sound effects going off at regular intervals. Amongst the shuddering, chop suey riffs, there are dance inflected interludes running amok amongst the smouldering jackhammer guitars which offer some welcome respite from the blitzkrieg rain of hyper driven discord. There is an interesting moment on ‘Meta Art’ where a saxophone takes up a duel with the pummelling metallic guitars. The two competing musical forces interlock and embrace to create what on paper sounds like a terrible idea but within the context on this album, makes perfect sense. It shouldn’t work but does.
That said, there are many moments on this album that fail to land. It’s not that the songs are bad necessarily, but they represent nothing new or innovative. It’s nothing you wouldn’t have heard before if you’re looking for some metal riffs, wearing a coat of electronica and dance influenced backbeats. There are bands that have been there and done that with far more aplomb. Bands such as Loathe for example, have this stuff down pat, they also have a vocalist that lifts everything they have to the next level and there’s the rub. If, like Stömb, you’re an instrumental band, you must be pitch perfect and have songs that explode out of the gate and take your head off from the get-go. Much of this album does not. I get it, this is experimental, often clever, and at times deliciously left field, but for me, despite a few sparkling moments of real class and clarity, ‘Massive Disturbed Meta Art’ is simply OK. Clever, yes. Stylistically it is certainly pushing some boundaries within the post metal/djent genre, but ultimately, there is not enough originality nor innovation contained within this album that can really set Stömb aside from multiple other bands doing the same sort of thing within this genre. It’s an interesting, if at times overly calculated and slightly detached album, that just doesn’t set my pulse racing.
(6/10 Nick Griffiths)
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