The Contortionist – Intrinsic

July 17, 2012 • Season of Mist

I raved plenty about The Contortionist's breakthrough EP Apparition, with its original style that successfully fused deathcore with progressive metal; their first full-length was just about as good for the same reasons. But it seems the band is starting to drift a bit from their original sound—which is completely understandable (no one should be stuck playing the exact same thing their whole career), but I'm not terribly excited about the direction Intrinsic is taking.

There aren't really any surprises for anyone who's heard Exoplanet: there's the same incredibly technical guitar riffs and drum lines, plenty of palm-muted detuned chugging, and the occasional light melodic bridge. What threw me the most was the addition of clean vocals, and how way different they are from the harsh vocals: they're very soft and airy, which sounds a bit strange alongside the incredibly heavy riffing. They have their place now and again, in the lighter and more atmospheric sections, though they can still be a bit jarring (especially opening up the album as they do). There are a few other additions like lots of keyboards; I don't remember offhand how much keyboard there was in their earlier material, but if there were any they definitely didn't form a core part of the band's sound as they do on Intrinsic. That, combined with some spacey vocal effects, gives the whole thing a very sci-fi feel at times, which is interesting.

The unfortunate thing about Intrinsic is that it mostly gets rid of one of The Contortionist's most defining aspects—their deathcore sound. They were just about the only band who could do deathcore well (probably because of the prog fusion) but here it's almost totally gone in favor of more straightforward progressive metal and math metal, kind of like Gojira minus the death metal. Some people will see this as a positive change, but personally I think it makes them seem a bit more generic and thus there's much less reason to listen to Intrinsic over Exoplanet. They still do pull out a really awesome breakdown here and there, like near the end of "Cortical" or all of the Meshuggah-esque "Solipsis", but they are so few and far between it's disappointing even though they are good.

While it has its moments, on the whole I'm not totally thrilled by Intrinsic. I preferred the old Contortionist because they were unique, even if they were a bit silly. Intrinsic is still a decent album and I'm sure plenty of people will get enjoyment out of it, and I've gotten a bit myself, but I can't say it's an improvement.

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