As I stood tightly squeezed between the club's plywood bar and some bouncers, the maelstrom unfolded before me, nearly becoming quaint. It was my first and last heavy metal concert, a Relapse Records showcase on the outskirts of Brooklyn. I don't remember what I'd expected my curiosity to yield that evening, but mere seconds after the house lights dimmed, amidst a pit of writhing bodies dancing violently to Cephalic Carnage's blistering rendition of "Jesus Saves"-- a setting in which leather is preferred to denim, and quiet introspection will get your teeth kicked in-- I was privy to a blaring personal revelation: I did not belong there.
Being acclimated to a more passive absorption of the music that was now being presented on stage in deafening megadecibels, I was ill-prepared for the engaging and brutal nature of metal-- this unreadiness stemming not only from my being a coward (which I am), but also from my unfamiliarity with a parallel, yet decidedly foreign, subculture.
Philadelphia's Dysrhythmia is a band unplagued by any similar fear of genre-crossing, as they seek to prove that the door is capable of swinging at least one way with their recent album, Pretest. Outfitting elements of Relapse's signature metal and grind-core sound with post-rock's jazz-influenced complexity, Dysrhythmia have created a collection of instrumental tracks with contemporaneous comparisons drawn to Don Caballero, early Mogwai, and The Fucking Champs. Overseen by Steve Albini, who has previously engineered projects by both Don Cab and Mogwai, the group nearly pulls off their fusion, forming a viable indie-by-way-of-metal hybrid that slumps only when it underestimates the range of the former through debased pride in the latter.
"Running Shoe of Justice" appropriately delivers a racing march upon which a borrowed Explosions in the Sky melody is layered before dissipating into a dissonant wall of feedback. Similarly building off of a strongly percussive skeleton is "Heat Sink", a track that delivers on the band's roots with buzzsaw guitars accented by a fuzzy and dominating bass. This heart of metal is deceptive, though, as a distinct pop-tune arises, bouncy in comparison to the dark and rapidly pulsing percussion that nearly buries it.
"Annihilation", the two-part centerpiece of the album, concurrently represents the musical peak, beginning with a beautiful upper-register guitar line that chills as it echoes against the bass drum that is itself inevitably immersed within the sparse background. As the percussion increases with fits of Robert Wyatt-inspired furor, an approachable rhythm emerges that ultimately cascades into a more reliable beat. Rapid bursts of energy alternately led by guitar and bass punctuate the remainder of the suite, with interjections finally giving way to the peaceful finale of light reverb followed by silence.
Merely having the moxie to attempt to build a bridge between the raw aggression of metal and the brooding intricacy of post-rock does not necessitate success, though, as evidenced by the tracks "Catalog of Personal Faults", "And Just Go", and "My Relationship". Treading on shaky ground, the songs all manage to combine either the least interesting elements of both musical approaches or the most clichéd, resulting in frivolous exercises in one style or the other. Proving the unhealthiness of excess, "Touch Benediction" sounds like a band falsely assuming an easy acceptance into the folds of instrumental indie rock, pushing a simple motif well past its welcome and ending the album on an extremely weak note.
A similar overconfidence could hypothetically compel a hardened New York metalhead to assume dominance in say, a Tortoise concert, or for that matter, Bright Eyes. While the individual probably wouldn't experience any mortal fear, as one might at a Relapse Records showcase, he or she would feel the same level of discomfort and antipathy that the opposite situation prompted in me. There are definitely bands that are capable of moving back and forth between the two poles, but, although Dysrhythmia rise to the challenge for a few wonderful moments, they don't show any real consistency at it here. Instead, they often return to the safe-ground of one of the two genres throughout Pretest, and wind up alienating both of the scenes they were seeking to unite.
