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- October 2, 2021
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Animals as Leaders
After five years, Animals as Leaders returns to the Prog-metal scene with their unrelenting single, “Monomyth”. Having never listened to the group before, it was interesting to dissect the guitar work by Tosin Abasi and understand how the band operates. After a few listens, the idea of re-listenability resonates heavily with the single. You don’t know if the track is “good,” yet, after each listen, you want to comprehend more about the song, much like a great film. It is within the confusion and intrigue left ruminating in your subconscious that you suddenly realize this single is special.
Monomyth is part fever dream, part ritual. Its imagery represents man’s ceaseless attempts to translate transcendent ideas into movement.
The conflation of struggle with meaning [along with]…Pain with significance. The ultimate failure of distilling perceived patterns in the world into knowledge.
Tosin Abasi
Animals as Leaders is dead set on doing something different, and you can hear that in the instruments. The group seems to be in their own groove, conjoined only by an odd time signature. The single is riddled with ambiance combined with virtuosic guitar and a syncopated chugging rhythm. Without a doubt, the elements of the track are heavy (thanks to the syncopated bass and guitar chugging), yet oddly calming, almost ASMR-like at moments.
Perhaps these quaint elements can be attributed to the song arrangement. With a synth that is sprinkled into the mix much like droplets of rain, the refreshing fact there are no vocals, or the fast bass drum triplets, we hear a wide variety of ideas compacted into one melody. Regardless, there are so many subtitles in the production; it takes the most active listener to name-drop them all… fingers crossed that someone is you.
With such vail of mystery surrounding Monomyth, be sure to stick around when Glasse Factory breaks the ice!
