Lost in Focus (CD - 2006)

If the most extreme free jazz -- not the spacey, reflective AACM-style explorations of Roscoe Mitchell and Anthony Braxton, but the really dense, unforgiving stuff one associates with Charles Gayle or late-period John Coltrane -- has a metal equivalent, it may very well be the violently chaotic style that is now being called "mathcore." Combine metalcore with the angularity of math rock and the chaos of noise rock, and you get mathcore (also known as "math metal" or "technical metalcore"). Apiary's Lost in Focus is quintessential mathcore -- vicious, ultra-dense, angry, and mercilessly harsh like regular metalcore, but abstract in a way that regular metalcore bands like Hatebreed, Brick Bath, NDE, and Throwdown are not. While those bands have a groove when they batter, pummel and trample the listener (figuratively speaking, of course), Lost in Focus and similar releases go out of their way not to groove. Apiary don't get their primary inspiration from Throwdown or Hatebreed, but rather, from the technical assault of the Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, Meshuggah and Starkweather (who got together in Philadelphia back in 1990 and are considered by some Philly residents to be the godfathers of the mathcore/math metal/technical metalcore style). Don't expect to find a traditional verse/chorus/verse format on Lost in Focus; Apiary's tunes zig and zag all over the road, and their material thrives on being discordant, chaotic, and disjointed. This type of album is as difficult as it is ferocious, which is why comparisons to the most extreme free jazz are valid (the Dillinger Escape Plan even acknowledges jazz as an influence). Lost in Focus isn't in a class with the best releases that Dillinger or Converge have to offer; the disc is mildly uneven and not very original, although it has more ups than downs and is a generally decent (if derivative) example of mathcore's head-kicking complexity. ~ Alex Henderson minimize