The image of scattered, seemingly unrelated jigsaw pieces spread across the cover of
Psyopus' second album, 2007's
Our Puzzling Encounters Considered, offers a perfect visual representation of their chaotic, fragmented brand of arty math-metal. But of course there's absolutely nothing incidental about violently dissonant and Byzantine "songs" such as "The Pig Keeperís Daughter," "Insects" and "Happy Valentineís Day," all of which require an incredible amount of forethought, never mind musical dexterity, to assemble in the first place, and then keep from falling apart during performance. Oblique song titles like "Scissor Fuck Paper Doll" and "Whore Meet Liar" also reflect the often impenetrable, dada-ist nature of
Psyopus' lyrics, and it doesn't take a genius (although it may take a psychiatrist!) to surmise that
Mike Patton-worshipping vocal freak show Adam Frappoli is the perfect creative foil for legend-in-his-own-time guitarist Christopher "Arpmandude" Arp's visionary sonic creations. Although the singer and the formidable rhythm section of bassist Fred DeCoste and drummer Jon Cole are all conspicuously excluded from Arpmandude's mini-orchestral tour de force on the Canon-like "Siobhanís Song," it's an instrumental of astonishingly gentle sweetness. Another, more intense, instrumental, the percussively intense "Imogenís Puzzle, Pt. 2," leaves one certain that somewhere, somehow,
Frank Zappa is grinning; and chances are Uncle
Frank would have gotten a good kick out of the musician in-joke that is "Play Some Skynyrd." In short: if music can be correlated to mathematics, this album would be an advanced course of Calculus or Trigonometry, so listeners too lazy to put in the necessary hours of study required to make head or tail of it should not even bother to sign up in the first place. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia