Virtuoso guitarist Tosin Abasi must have more fingers on each hand and more joints on each digit than your average human being because he can make an 8-string plank do things that’d make your nose bleed. So much so that when listening to Animals As Leaders, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by his incredible technique and almost completely forget about the music. But where the 2009 debut album was a solo project where he was the central focus, Abasi has chosen to eschew the limelight that he could so easily inhabit and involved new band members Javier Reyes and Navene Koperweis in the writing process for Weightless. The result is a bunch of instrumental tracks that are the product of three, not one, incredibly accomplished musicians who have pushed the bounds of Animals As Leaders already expansive palette even further.

Their sense of melody, harmony and composition is matched only by their highly evolved ability to seamlessly blend the power of progressive metal with the complexities of jazz fusion and the rhythmic glitch and hi-tech ambience of electronica. Staring as they mean to go on, ‘An Infinite Regression’ blends unending technical virtuosity with time-signature and feel-changes aplenty, a catchy melody occasionally appearing atop the shifting textures. The technical and musical wizardry of the opening track (and of course the debut album) remains throughout the album, itself a vast array of sounds, textures and dynamic shape-shifting. With many a chugging riff and an ever-evolving and increasingly intricate bunch of jazz/prog/metal-infused guitar lines, Animals As Leaders again add electronica into the mix. Its use in ‘Somnarium’ and ‘Earth Departure’ adds a mechanical feel to the tracks that complements the technical ability of the band and their aesthetic sensibilities. (Given the added electronica elements scattered through the album, it would be interesting to hear Abasi and/or the band work with jazz bassist extraordinaire and glitch/electronica aficionado Squarepusher.) On instrumental albums, too many tracks are ruined by musicians that insist on filling every space with a flurry of redundant activity, but the ambient tracks ‘Espera’ and album closer ‘David’ act as a respite from the overpowering wave of technicality, the keyboards draped with delayed guitar chords, sounds and shapes emerging from the near-blank canvas showing the band’s capacity for knowing what not to play.

Hoever, sometimes the tracks feel as if they are more the product of competition between three musicians trying to outshine each other and more of intellectual design than emotive compulsion. They raise the question as to where technique ends and music begins. The use of electronica is a nice touch but at the same time it foregrounds the acute precision of their performance. In so doing, the tracks are dehumanised, the tracks being filleted of emotion or human expression. Technically, the album is more than satisfying, but musically it can be a challenging listen. Instrumental albums do invite this challenge and Animals As Leaders accept it head on. ‘To Lead You To An Overwhelming Question’ and the title track are both journeys in that they follow more successful comprehensive and cohesive structures, the tracks feeling a little more “human” than the others.At times Weightless can be confused, dry, and maybe a little forced, but it is as impressive as Abasi’s debut and is much more developed in terms of depth, dimension and dynamism. What is most significant about this release is that Animals As Leaders is now a band and all of its members are contributing and pushing each other ever upwards. With that in mind, maybe it’s best to consider Weightless their debut. And should the line-up remain as it is and continue on this trajectory, their next album will be out of this world. As for Weightless, it’s phenomenal.

Track Listing:

1. An Infinite Regression
2. Odessa
3. Somnarium
4. Earth Departure
5. Isolated Incidents
6. Do Not Go Gently
7. New Eden
8. Cylindrical Sea
9. Espera
10. To Lead You To An Overwhelming Question
11. Weightless
12. David