Well, UneXpect is one of the most musical and lyrical bands out there. Period. That's a fact. Their EP, entitled _wE, Invaders, proves it.
If it wasn't obvious enough by the EP's title and the band's name, UneXpect prides themselves on being different in any way possible. The bassist for the band, whose stage name is ChaotH, started using a 9-stringed bass shortly after this album released for little noticeable reason other than to be different. The band also has a violin as a feature instrument, something very uncommon from anything that isn't symphonic black metal. The band even occasionally dabbles in using music samples, which is pretty much unheard of in the traditional metal scene.
So UneXpect is different, but different doesn't necessarily mean good. Some metal bands are simply too progressive for their own good. After all, the end goal of making music is to entertain people, and if the music isn't entertaining, the musicians essentially failed at being musicians. A good example of this is Tool, a band that people respect for being innovative but not one that not even a metal enthusiast would play in their car while driving to work every day. Is UneXpect's sophomoric EP so different that it loses its entertainment value?
No. In fact, it's one of the best metal albums out there and will continue to impress with every listen.
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Album: _wE, Invaders
Band: UneXpect
Year Released: 2003
Genre: Avant-Garde Metal
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This EP contains 4 songs, but each song is of a decent length for a metal song, averaging around six minutes, and none of the songs ever get dull like a lot of rock and metal songs tend to do when they cross the 5 minute mark.
The album starts out with simple audio effects and drums, setting the dark tone and mood of the first track, Novae. Tension continues to build up through the first minute of the first song until an organ solo kicks in. With the solo soon comes one instrument after another, finally reaching a climax.
When the song really begins, a typical non-metal enthusiast would hate it at first. But if that listener took another few seconds to really dig into the song, they would begin to hear the real musicality behind this song. The drums, which are the reason behind the "white noise" categorization of heavy metal songs, can more easily be overlooked to focus on the impressive guitar work, the brilliant harmony between the two female vocal lines, and the surprisingly fitting violin.
People that cannot respect metal are people who cannot listen beyond the growling and drums, features which only serve to make the music sound more aggressive. It never was intended to be the highlight of the songs they are in. UneXpect clearly demonstrates real talent, but like a lot of metal, it just takes a little bit of time to recognize.
What's even more interesting is that only about a minute of the song has the really aggressive drums and growling. The rest of the song is pure musical talent, and I love it for that, despite this song being my least favorite on the album.
The second song, Rooted Shadows, starts with a beautiful female vocal line with some electronic samples and keyboard thrown in the background to set the mood. The intro definitely has some surprises, but for this band, pardon the pun, you have to expect the UneXpected. This song's chorus definitely is a bit heavier than Novae, but it has a more defined melody and focuses a lot more on the vocals, which have to be respected.
UneXpect tends to follow a similar pattern with most of their songs. There's an intro followed by a refrain that tends to be heavy and aggressive. After that comes the middle section, which tends to regress the song into something simpler, but completely different from the refrain. The rest of the song then takes that different melody and builds it back up until the refrain is revisited. In some of the songs on their full-length albums they do this twice in one song, but on this EP they stick to this formula pretty closely.
What usually defines UneXpect songs are not the refrain, but rather the middle section, especially in the case of Rooted Shadows. It's a fantastic song, but it is not my favorite on the album.
The longest, and perhaps most memorable, track on the EP is In Velvet Coffins We Slept, a rerecording of a song from their 1999 album "Utopia". This version is by far the superior version, giving much more focus to the violin. The violin in this song is some of the best violin work I have ever heard. It's not the most technical or most difficult, but it just fits so well.
This is also the only song on the album where I can say that the refrain is just as memorable as the middle part, making this entire song a really great listen. A lot of metal enthusiasts would recommend Iron Maiden or Metallica as a good entry point to metal, but this song would not be too bad of an entry point for a classically-trained musician.
The other interesting aspect of this song is that the refrain is only about 90 seconds long. The remainder of this eight-minute track is all build-up, and very entertaining build-up at that. Most songs that try this approach would get dull within 2 minutes, but this song manages to continue to keep the listener's attention for 5 minutes before the second chorus hits.
The most unique track on this album is its last, Chromatic Chimera. Following the core belief of UneXpect, the last thing anyone would expect on a metal album is a classical piano piece, and sure enough that is exactly what they did. This song is so unique and different that it blows all expectation away. No other classical-style piece is anything like this.
This song, despite not being anything like the prior three songs in terms of sound, still manages to sound just like an UneXpect song. The beginning part is an intro to a refrain, which degrades into something simpler and more playful, slowly building up to the refrain again. It's engaging, it's unique, and it's the best song on the album.
This song also features a really unique ending, to say the least. The piano suddenly cuts in and out of static before regressing to a simple melody played by a music box. It's a perfect way to end this song and this album. When this song is listened to on its own, the ending will seem very out of place, but when closing out the full album, it wraps it up in a similar manner to how the album began, as if the album was being played from an old set of speakers, but the music brought listeners to a different reality of chaos and insanity before bringing them back to reality and lullabying them to the album's close.
UneXpect liked this song so much that they decided to adapt it into a metal song as the first track of their following album, "In a Flesh Aquarium". That album, while still decent, is occasionally a bit too progressive for its own good, and while Chromatic Chimera is still a good song on that album, the classical adaption here is by far the superior version.
This song also features a really unique ending, to say the least. The piano suddenly cuts in and out of static before regressing to a simple melody played by a music box. It's a perfect way to end this song and this album. When this song is listened to on its own, the ending will seem very out of place, but when closing out the full album, it wraps it up in a similar manner to how the album began, as if the album was being played from an old set of speakers, but the music brought listeners to a different reality of chaos and insanity before bringing them back to reality and lullabying them to the album's close.
UneXpect liked this song so much that they decided to adapt it into a metal song as the first track of their following album, "In a Flesh Aquarium". That album, while still decent, is occasionally a bit too progressive for its own good, and while Chromatic Chimera is still a good song on that album, the classical adaption here is by far the superior version.
This album, simply put, is fantastic. It unilaterally proves that metal is a lot more than just drums and growling, and it manages to do more interesting things than even some of the most praised artists have ever done.
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I will not be giving albums a numerical score as music is a very subjective topic. What may be 5 stars for some may be 1 star for others. All I can give is my pure opinion. I hope you enjoyed the first review - at the conclusion of all of these posts will be a short sample of each song compiled in a YouTube video, and a link to buy the album from both iTunes and the band directly (if you want a physical copy).
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Music Sample Video: <to be added at a later date>
UneXpect's site: http://unexpect.com/unxpct/index.php/music-2/
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