After
Chimaira's debut full length album, Pass
Out of
Existance, metal fans weren't too thrilled with the band. They were generic nu-metal.
That's not good. Of all the forms of metal to be in they had picked the absolute worst one, and weren't even doing anything to stand out in it.
That's why, in 2003,
Chimaira surprised the entire metal community by releasing
The Impossibility of Reason, an great groove/thrash release. Looking back upon their discography, this album is far from the best (I'd give that title to 2007's
Resurrection), but in one album's time, they improved more than any band I've ever seen.
The album's tone reminds me of
Soulfly's
Prophecy/
Dark Ages, era; it's got its groove, its thrash, and its odd experimental bits. Now this is where it differs: Where
Soulfly experiments with world music ranging from Brazil (Max Cavalera's home country) to
Egypt,
Chimaira experiments with clean vocals and melancholic breakdowns a la Alice in Chains. This suits the band well. Mark
Hunter's voice is incredible and powerful whether he's singing or screaming, the man is spot on. Listen to the track "Pictures in the Gold Room" to understand what I'm talking about.
This album starts off with a bang, let me tell you. The first six songs on this album are pure headbanging groove/thrash with thick riffs and pounding drums. The music, though it's not the most technical, is extremely fun to listen to. This is where the album hits a snag. Right up through "
Pure Hatred", an excellent, heavy slab o' thrash, the album's awesome. But once the track "
The Dehumanizing Process" hits, the album kind of stutters. The track isn't bad, but it's not as good, and it really slows the album down. The next song, "
Crawl", sort of tricks you into thinking "
The Dehumanizing Process" was just a one-off mistake, but right after that song is over we get a three song streak of substandard tracks. This is frustrating because we know
Chimaira can do better than this. The good news is that none of these four "problem" songs ever drop down into the terrible depths of nu-metal like their previous album.
Besides, after the letdown of tracks 9, 10, and 11, we get "Implements of
Destruction", a thirteen minute epic masterpiece, almost as good as Metallicas epics of the 80's. So, this album isn't perfect. But it's a lot of fun to listen to even though it comes dangerously close to completely collapsing towards the end. It's also the album that got
Chimaira respect in the metal world. Now that the guys have been around for ten years and they have a whole back catalogue to choose from, I'd tell beginners to check out
Resurrection first. But people that already know they like
Chimaira should definitely go for this. They won't be disappointed.
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