Prescient – The Polynomial Framework (2011)

With an incredible amount of musical skills, today we have Australia’s Prescient and their debut EP titled “The Polynomial Framework”. Delivering six tracks of brilliant Progressive Metal with excellent technical and groovy aspects, this band crafts excellent music that is both attractive and very technically complex, allowing these two dimensions to seamlessly fuse to perfection.

Opening with the excellent “Revolutions”, the distorted guitars nicely make their way on top of well-crafted drums. While not as dominating as Meshuggah, Prescient delivers a strong foundation that features Groove-infused sections that nicely shift into more melodic passages. The album’s production allows all instruments to shine, especially the bass guitar in the more ‘mellow’ sections. The guitar wizardry makes its way on “Conductive Cell”, a very moody track that nicely shifts intensities and delivers very well crafted guitar solos and drum patterns.

“Phases of Penumbra Pt. I” is one of our favorite tracks in terms of how it develops and the excellent melodic sections. The drumming is pretty solid, but we think that the guitar work is what makes this track stick in your head. The grooviness of “The Construct” immediately jumps out with a pulsating bass guitar line and very well crafted tempo changes. The underlying Progressive Metal structures are every present, but they are nicely kept ‘hidden’ under the powerful guitars and mostly surfaces when the distortion goes away and the solos come out.

Closing in a high note, “Foresight” delivers crushing riffing that resemble Meshuggah a bit more than before. At this point we also noticed that while the band’s musical abilities are undeniable, the album was starting to get a bit repetitive since the last track. While we understand that many groove metal releases have songs that sound a lot alike, we think that maybe exploiting the melodic passages a bit more would have added a different twist to the band’s sound and delivered a more satisfying musical experience. If you are looking for a hybrid of Meshuggah and Dream Theater with some hints of The Dillinger Scape Plan, you should not miss Prescient.

Release: December 6th, 2011

Genre: Instrumental Progressive/Technical Metal

Country: Australia