YAKUZA

YAKUZA     "Sutra"

By Dr. Abner Mality

Here's more proof that you can't write anybody off these days. Chicago's strange jazz/metal hybrid returns to action after more than a decade and if there is a better label to handle this outfit than Finland's eclectic Svart Records, I don't know what it would be. 

Always weird and walking their own path, they haven't gotten any less odd here. The first track "2 Is 1" seems almost deliberately to be bad...Bruce Lamont's vocals are always an acquired taste, but here they are so off kilter, they just don't compute. Nothing about this track works...I wonder if it is a kind of challenge to the listener. If you can make it past this one, you deserve to hear the REAL YAKUZA.

Fortunately, that's just what happens. The rest of the album is all up from there. "Alice" is a kind of grungy, sludgy tune with a smoky jazz twist, but "Sutra" really gets rolling with "Echoes From the Sky". This is a real chimera of progressive, constantly shifting metal, hitting a lot of cool riffs and clever time changes. A modern day metallic KING CRIMSON is not a bad comparison. Many cuts like "Embers" and "Capricorn Rising" start slow, laid back and sultry, with a kind of film noir feel, but they work themselves up to something heavier and more intense, with Lamont's sax adding atmosphere.

"Into Forever" is a short, bullish cut with roaring vocals to match, while "Psychic Malaise" finds YAKUZA at their most noisy and avant-garde...full of squalling frequencies and thick guitar. The album wraps up with the epic "Never The Less", which ups the jazz quotient with plenty of smoky sax work.

It's still quite a journey and requires some work. "2 Is 1" had me worried for a bit, but the trepidation passes quickly. Is this YAKUZA's best album? No, for me, that will always be "Of Seismic Consequence". But it is indisputably and undeniably a YAKUZA album...

SVART RECORDS 

YAKUZA