UNEVEN STRUCTURE: A RESCUE FROM THE DJENTY DJOLDJRUMS OF SAMENESS

As 2009 morphed into 2010 morphs into 2011, the djent scene is more than just a small uprising of guitar message board dorks gone ambitious; it’s now a movement to be reckoned with. But with the explosion of bands within the djent scene we’re now faced with the usual paradox that befalls newly popular genres: scores and scores of imitators with nary an original idea.

Uneven Structure are the exception to the 2nd gen rule. I don’t know much about them, but I must learn more.

Aany time a genre reaches its saturation point and becomes flooded with copycats the next step for new, up-and-coming bands looking to differentiate themselves is usually to step things up a notch and branch out a little. Oftentimes this comes in the form of getting more technical, more proggy and more extreme. But djent is a proggressive/proggy/extreme genre by nature, so where can bands go from there? In other words, djent already has all of those knobs turned up to 11.

Uneven Structure resort to other musical measures to cure the copycat blues; they’re willing to experiment with slow tempos usually not used in metal, incredibly lush soundscapes, and — gasp — lots of clean vocals. The result, at least from the 7:30 clip of their forthcoming album Februus posted above, is something that has a tried-and-true djenty base with a brand new facade, something familiar wrapped up in something wholly new. No word on a release date for Februus yet, but expect it at some point in 2011.

-VN