When Yakuza hits the bulls eye, they bludgeon. "Meat Curtains", the opening track on Transmutations, the Chicago progressive metal quartet's follow-up to 2006's Samsara, is one hell of a song. From its opening distorted chords (slow, barely tapped out) and vocalist/saxophonist Bruce Lamont's heart attack-inducing bellow through the nimble but messily clamoring drums, jagged guitars, and sludgy stoner harmonies, it's like a Baroness/Mastodon hybrid slowly flailing for life and moving toward its spastic grindcore-like close. A couple of tracks later, "Congestive Art-Failure" finds Lamont doing some underwater gargle before peeling into a heavier slam that reminds me of "In The Meantime" when it starts cycling forward, though that's likely weird pesonal residue (it's way crustier than Helmet would've been with their tight-on-the-side cuts and Branca calling cards). The one clean voice/one shredded tongue chorus is also legtimately catchy, like a fucking Neurosis pop song.
What happens when they miss? It's not that they whiff...they wander. I've been living with the album for quite some time and whenever I plop it in my expectations are high after "Meat Curtain"'s seven minutes and "Congestive Art-Failure"'s quick jabs. Somewhere around the halfway point, though, when one too many songs have meandered or pummeled somewhat generically or felt like not-grand-enough grand finales, I leave disappointed. It's not that I don't enjoy the excursions: "Meat Curtain"'s followed by the slower, Eastern-tinged "Egocide". Lamont plays sax on this one (and on the upcoming Nachtmystium album Assassins). It has an almost cool-jazz vibe, only more psychedelic and downcast, and with lines like "tear out your eyes/ So you can see." It works. It's the first of these sorts of pieces on the record. It's almost eight minutes long and it slays. After you've run into the third or fourth of the smokey, waylaying jams...the initital charm turns a bit into tedium.
It doesn't help that the tracks always alternate slow, fast, slow, fast. The wax on/wax off ends up feeling calculated-- like things are never allowed to flow naturally. This is an actual order: "Raus", Isis-style with doubled echo-y harmonies, is followed by "Steal the Fire", which races by in two minutes and change. Then comes "The Blinding", slower but with bigger yowls, wicked atmospherics, more Eastern tunings and "Existence Into Oblivion", another fast one (with great harmonies this time). The best of the sax-y slow ones, "Perception Management", opens with sinewy clean guitars and after the two-minute intro the moody sax develops and attitude-- by the end of the track's seven-plus minutes, it's shredding in some kinda possessed call and response with the rest of the band.
The album's plenty intense. It lulls and then attacks-- but it strays too much to nail things into the ground. Conversely, it's expansive, but only teasingly so. Yakuza have been around a long time, are known for their interest in, and interweaving of, various strains of world music and psychedelia into their metal. It can be totallly gorgeous. The percussion, or one, is always varied, interesting-- Hand drums to oil drums. Each player has a lot to offer: They're great musicians with an interesting sense of space.
So, what the fuck? Maybe they need an editor type to tell them where to nip and tuck, where to let it out. Each song has so much in it, you're exhausted, but the exhaustion never goes far enough. Neither path's followed far enough. See the issue? All this back and forth and public self-debate and new math is coming from someone who swears by OV, Asunder, Deathspell Omega, Merzbow, and the La Monte Young back catalog in equal parts. Which is why I'm going into such detail. Transmutations has the ingredients and indulgence and eccentricity I normally love. Too much of the time, it just doesn't get the job done.
