![]() ![]() It is, however, the track that brings Super Collider to a close that indicates its creator’s mindset for the album. “Forget To Remember” and “Don’t Turn Your Back…” deliver more of the melodic metal Mustaine intended, with the latter punching for a tempo more familiar to Megadeth fans. Before going full-on hillbilly-folk, however, Mustaine brings it back to a haunting, militaristic arrangement punctuated with staccato riffs. “The Blackest Crow” opens with a banjo sequence the surprises continue with the addition of violins. “Dance In The Rain” – featuring a guest appearance from Disturbed’s David Draiman – and “Beginning Of Sorrow” both offer a change of pace akin to Megadeth’s classic “In My Darkest Hour,” before things take a turn for the unexpected. Meanwhile, “Burn!” and “Off The Edge” are midtempo tracks reminiscent of Megadeth’s NWOBHM roots, while the likes of “Built For War” is a groove-metal track on which the band get creative with off-kilter time signatures. True to his word, Mustaine took the opportunity to write a heavy song with a more archetypal structure, rather than blasting listeners with breakneck riffs. “Super Collider,” however, offers an immediate change of pace. Anyone expecting Mustaine to follow the made-for-radio of those bands, however, would have been surprised by the galloping thrash attack of the album’s opening track, “Kingmaker.” The song was the first to feature a writing credit from bassist David Ellefson after his return to the band (he had departed following 2001’s The World Needs A Hero), so it’s perhaps fitting that its febrile pace harkens back to Megadeth’s earlier sound. Like Th1rt3en before it, Super Collider was produced by Johnny K, a man who knows a thing or two about commercial metal, with albums by the likes of Disturbed, Sevendust, and Staind to his credit. But then a polished sheen didn’t do any harm to Countdown To Extinction, which remains Megadeth’s most commercially successful album. ![]() The risk, then, was in potentially alienating purist fans. “They are going to listen to that and think, I like that one song, and they are going to get the record and listen to the rest of the album and go, ‘Man, I love this style of music. “I think it also opens up a door,” he said. Highly recommended.In fact, Mustaine saw his band as capable of drawing in fans who didn’t necessarily like metal, but would want to explore it on the strength of the songs he crafted for Super Collider. I've no clear idea of what Lidell's on about for most of the time, but it hardly matters – it's the manner of his delivery, and the way his voice inhabits its sonic territory, that's most important here. Elsewhere, "Soily Soul" is the electro equivalent of Dr John's voodoo classic Gris Gris, a hypnotic, swampy dub-soul exercise glimpsed through a roiling fug of dope smoke, warmly atmospheric despite being constructed from electronic noise. There's a compelling fascination, too, in the way pieces teeter on the cusp of randomness but somehow slip into dark, infectious forms, like hibernating beasts grappling their way back to consciousness: "Gravity Rearrangin", for instance, opens with ominous bells and an assemblage of abstract synth noises, before oozing imperceptibly into an irresistible electro-funk-soul groove. Tracks such as "Closetails" and "Spillin Visions", with their jittery beats, oildrum bass tones, dark sheets of synth noise and impassioned soul phrasing, have an itchy, noirish quality: a sort of sinister digital ecstasy that's strangely addictive. Jamie Lidell and Cristian Vogel have both released solo albums before – notably the latter's absorbing Rescate 137 – but their work here as Super-collider is greater than the sum of their parts, its blend of semi-abstract, glitch-funk grooves and Lidell's breathless, agitated crooning recalling earlier techno pioneers such as Suicide and Cabaret Voltaire. Don't be put off by the cover: Raw Digits is one of the year's most exciting albums, an innovative fusion of noise and attitude that dispels once and for all the canard about the intrinsic soullessness of electronic music. ![]()
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