When an album has over the top songs titles like "We Boil the Raven's Skull Into Gold" and "We Binge on a Bloodthirsty God," one could easily assume that it contains some type of metal -- perhaps death metal or black metal, or perhaps thrash metal.
Gigantomachia, however, is not a metal album; actually, the focus of the Naked Future is instrumental free jazz. But as writer David Keenan points out in the liner notes that he wrote for this 2008 recording, there are parallels between avant-garde jazz and in-your-face rock (including punk). Keenan notes that
Cecil Taylor and
Albert Ayler, like
Iggy Pop & the Stooges, were icononoclasts -- and
Gigantomachia certainly has an iconoclastic outlook. Some avant-garde jazz favors an inside/outside approach, but this 47-minute CD is defiantly outside all the way.
Gigantomachia thrives on dissonance and atonal chaos -- and while the results aren't quite as ferocious as
John Coltrane circa 1966/1967 or
Charles Gayle, this album still offers a loud, forceful, explosive dose of free jazz intensity. The Naked Future (bass clarinetist
Arrington de Dionyso, pianist
Thollem McDonas, bassist Gregg Skloff and drummer John Niekrasz) are as hellbent for outside expression on the abovementioned performances as they are on "We Sleep in a Rabbit Hole," "We Engage the Monstrous with Our Mirrors," and "We Fly Beneath and Above the Flux."
Gigantomachia isn't groundbreaking by 2008 standards, and it isn't a remarkable album. But it's a decent effort that is worth hearing if one fancies free jazz discs that savor the outside from start to finish. ~ Alex Henderson