FROGG

FROGG     “Eclipse”

By Dr. Abner Mality

FROGG comes hopping out of the New York metro swamp and are a different kind of amphibian. Something about the band name made me think of jam bands and PHISH knock-offs. What we get is ultra-tech death brutality mixed with what sounds like DREAM THEATER on crack. It brought to mind old tech-death bands like NEURAXIS and AUGURY as well as modern iterations such as BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME.

It’s a jaw-dropping display of musical virtuosity, flying fingers and more tempo changes than an exploding clock factory. My question is: how do you remember any of it? If I come to you an hour after you hear “Eclipse” and ask you to remember the riff from, say, “Life Zero”, I’m betting you won’t have a clue. Just how many high speed arpeggios and chromatic guitar sweeps do you need? FROGG has a surplus. Each song is densely packed with them...I can’t recall when I last heard so many arpeggiated chords and riffs. The tunes here are also very “stop-start”, full of mathematical choppiness.

It is most exhausting to process. I just wonder if FROGG could have maybe had some tracks that kind of slowed things down a bit or maybe had some jazzy keyboard work. Something to maybe break up the death-tech assault a bit. And no, not the “micro-changes” that pop up here now and then, but something that flows a bit more smoothly.

If you asked me what tracks here made the best impression on me, I’d say that “Interspecific Hybrid Species” and “Double Vision Roll” qualify. Both are good prog-death tunes. And one thing I will say for FROGG, they don’t let tracks wander….only “Wake Up” exceeds the 5 minute mark. But when you can put almost an entire album’s worth of licks into a four minute track, it even things out.

Talent is here in abundance. What FROGG needs to do for greater impact is maybe hop off the tech-death lillypad and stretch out in a different way.

FROGG