01. See You Tomorrow Baby
02. Autistic Kill Trance [feat. Stace Fifield and Stuart Henley-Minchington]
03. Slow Hell
04. Johnny Menomic
05. Brute Fact
06. The Bare Maximum [feat. Ian Waye]
07. Kryptonite Renegade
08. Perfect Meadows In Every Direction [feat. Chad Kapper]
What was that hit movie called again, Everything Everywhere All At Once? There’s a certain strain of math-oriented metal, characterized by the likes of Car Bomb and Frontierer, that feels like the musical realization of that title, and Weston Super Maim follow firmly in those artists’ footsteps.
This multinational duo have been around for quite a while, albeit mostly as a dormant solo project. The oldest publicly available release from Weston Super Maim that I can find is The Neglected Works, a 2020 compilation of recordings from project founder and multi-instrumentalist Tom Stevens from between 2007 and 2018. Aside from guest vocals on a couple of tracks, The Neglected Works is instrumental-only, but 2020 also saw Stevens join forces with American vocalist Seth Detrick, a pairing that first produced the 2021 EP 180-Degree Murder, and now a proper full-length album release in the form of See You Tomorrow Baby.
The duo describe themselves as ‘if Meshuggah couldn’t count’, and there’s a clear resemblance to the Swedish prog giants in Weston Super Maim’s used of heavily downtuned djent riffing and complex polyrhythms. As far as the bands I mentioned in the opening of this review are concerned, Frontierer’s Chad Kapper contributes guest vocals to the record’s final song, with other guest contributions from Blindfolded And Led To The Woods’ Stace Fifield and Stuart Henley-Mitchington as vocalists on “Autistic Kill Trace”, as well as Soreption’s Ian Waye with a guitar solo on “The Bare Maximum”. Car Bomb do not guest on See You Tomorrow Baby, but parallels between this album’s sound and Car Bomb’s unhinged chaos are easy to draw, not least due to the use of ‘pew pew’ laser sounds on the likes of “Autistic Kill Trance” and “Kryptonite Renegade”.
Pretty much from the outset, this is an abrasive and intense listen. There’s almost an industrial feel to the low-end riffing opening the title track, although that might also be partly due to the synthesis of electronics, but this song unleashes hectic, muscular riffs with complex rhythms. See You Tomorrow Baby isn’t devoid of dynamic range, however, and this opening song does change course halfway through in favour of quieter soundscapes featuring ambient tones, albeit still paired with hectic, elaborate percussion. The use of melodic tones in key moments of the record help prevent the sheer chaos of the album’s core sound from becoming overwhelming, and similarly notable moments include an ominous lull before the solo section in “The Bare Maximum” and a brief pause preceding some guitar math insanity during “Kryptonite Renegade”.
Still, softer moments comprise a clear minority of See You Tomorrow Baby’s runtime, and the BaLTtW-featuring “Autistic Kill Trance” has a modern death brutality to go alongside those wacky Car Bomb-style sound effects and the earth-shaking climactic breakdown, while “Slow Hell” does a good job of capturing the polyrhythmic insanity that has defined Meshuggah’s career. This latter track serves as a good example of what Weston Super Maim bring themselves to the table; as much as that paranoia-feeding madness in the opening stages is impressive, the apocalyptic heaviness of the closing stages, built upon blistering double bass blasts, pained howls and eerie-yet-melodic guitar textures, is what truly makes an impression on listeners.
As far as other standout tracks are concerned, “Johnny Menomic” is a devastating bulldozer of heavy riffs that evolves in very satisfying manner when it slows down and weaves in off-kilter guitar leads in its final minutes. Another highlight is the 8-minute closer “Perfect Meadows In Every Direction”, which spans metallic mathcore madness, oddball contorted technicality, and bludgeoning polyrhythmic grooves, before pulling back for an unusually expansive and grandstand second half featuring tasty pyrotechnic lead guitar motifs above slow, crushing distortion and some almost melancholic contemplation.
This final phase of the song, and the record as whole, stands out a lot, and it would be intriguing to see Weston Super Maim explore such ideas on future releases; as much as the math belligerence is fun, it can be a bit overwhelming when rammed home by several similar songs in succession. Then again, Car Bomb and Frontierer have been taking no prisoners with their releases for a while, so there’s definitely a market for music such as this, and See You Tomorrow Baby is an accomplished rendition of this type of math metal madness.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 9 |
| Songwriting: | 7 |
| Originality: | 7 |
| Production: | 8 |
 | Written on 20.03.2024 by Hey chief let’s talk why not |