Martyr A.D.

The fact that the guy who "wrote every note that Disembodied ever recorded" and two of his former band-mates make up three-fifths of this Minneapolis band probably means different things to different people, dependant on how fond one was of Disembodied, but it shouldn't. Martyr A.D. tread very lightly in the pool that Disembodied filled and they do so only with the occasional chug of a down-tuned E-string. Martyr A.D. is far more diverse, as they incorporate full on metal, hardcore, an exploration of the grating dissonance that the fret board's higher registers can provide and even some melodic - almost emo! - scritching. The great thing about this album is that despite the diversity, it's still as heavy as all hell and hits and hurts like a game of rodeo poker. Overall, the band that once bored listeners with their monotonous molestation and overuse of down-picking chug is now a dynamic melange of Meshuggah, A Canorous Quartet and Converge and possesses soon-to-be classics numbers like "Broken Mouth," "Seventyfive - Twentyfive," "Withered Monarch" and "The Gestation Process." Redemption complete kids.