Shining - Blackjazz

I just got this in the mail so it’s time to review it, since it’s probably the most amazing thing I’ve heard since the intro to Merriweather Post Pavilion. Make no mistake though, this is nothing like Animal Collective. No sir.

This Shining should not be confused with all the other Shinings. There are a bunch. The most prominent (in my world) are the Swedish band, who play a very depressive sort of black metal. Their album V – Halmstad is amazing. These guys, however, are from Norway, and play pretty spastically complex genre mishmashes primarily composed of metal and jazz, leaning toward the blacker end of the metal spectrum. They’ve put out four albums before this one that I haven’t really paid any attention to because they’re just a bit too eclectic to be entertaining. For this, their fifth full-length, they’ve opted for a much more distilled version of their sound, giving in almost entirely to their metal side. The vocals are more prominent and the riffs are angular and abrasive. Once in a while you’ll hear a saxophone doing completely inhumane things alongside some schizophrenic synthesizers.

This album is a very new beast. I’ve never heard anything like it really; from the first note on my first listen I had a huge smile on my face. This kind of structured discord is really what makes me happy in music; that and the vibrant sound that just makes my ears ring. Some points of interest that might drag the more skeptical into it are a small tribute to Muse in the track “Exit Sun,” and an excellent (in my opinion) cover of “21st Century Schizoid Man” by the legendary King Crimson. I keep reading other people’s thoughts on that cover and few of them seem to like it, but I think it’s a great closer to the album.

Here’s a live performance of “Fisheye”