ShadowKeep: A Chaos Theory

Picking up where Queensrÿche left off 10 years ago, ShadowKeep plays exactly the sort of music the name would lead you to expect: Thundering castle rock replete with double-kick-drum pounding, and a ceaseless spray of 64th notes from the dual guitar attack. Often playing in harmony a la Iron Maiden, guitarists Nicki Robson and Chris Allen climb up and down the full complement of major and minor scales with dizzying dispatch, running through change after tortuous change, refusing to give the audience a chance to orient themselves within the relentless cacophony. With his operatic yelps, his pleading whine, and his occasional shrieks, singer M. Rogue accurately approximates Bruce Dickinson and Geoff Tate, capturing their peculiar combination of earnest intensity and outright silliness. Such silliness, intended or not, is a boon for the casual listener, because this sort of technically intricate music is only entertaining when it has a touch of comedy to it. Otherwise, it seems like sheer indulgence, ego-stroking self-aggrandizement.

For the serious listeners, the fans of this genre, the point of ShadowKeep’s music is different. ShadowKeep besieges listeners with furious speed and noise, inducing an almost involuntary head banging while short-circuiting any troubling trains of thought that might otherwise be preoccupying those listening. A few delicate acoustic, quasi-classical interludes (“Atalanta Fugiens”, “The Kether’s Syndrome”) provide a moment’s respite, only so the onslaught may be renewed with enhanced impact. It is almost impossible to concentrate while listening to this music, which makes it strange that the lyrics often take up such cryptic and convoluted pseudo-philosophical topics. A Chaos Theory seems to be a concept album having something to do with organized religion, fear, evil, and death, which that could probably be said about every progressive metal album ever made.

The lyrics are arcane to say the least: “There are two worlds and two worlds only / But the plane between them count as one / From the sides, dim and twice as many / Mark my words 8 and 8 and 1 will be the magic number, 17”. Or “It’s time to expose religion and all its legacy / Of crystal-ball science fiction hatching human diseases”. Or “Mankind has enslaved our lore in their pages of fraud / But they will find no mercy in the eyes of the free / I’m the one who summoned raw creatures of blood / An army of minions that will spread the word”. Perhaps in their esoteric nonsense, the words are not meant to be comprehended, but are meant to be as bewildering and disorienting as the music, overwhelming the brain the way the music overwhelms the senses. You are not intended to make rational sense of them, rather just be subsumed by their gloomy, portentous aura.

In the 18th century, aestheticians believed that when confronted with something majestically incomprehensible, usually some massive display of nature’s raw power, the mind would be overloaded and thus astonished into a kind of involuntary pleasure, which they deemed the “experience of the sublime”. In 1757, Edmund Burke compiled a list of elements that make up sublimity, all of which, arguably, could be applied to the music of ShadowKeep: Obscurity, vastness, power, a succession of uniform elements, suddenness, animal-like cries, difficulty, and, of course, loudness. 18th century authors, too, who attempted to produce sublime effects in their fiction usually resorted to the subjects that preoccupy ShadowKeep: Death, God, fear, chaos, pain, and the like. There is a case to be made that the entire genre of progressive metal has its roots in such an aesthetics, passed down through the centuries in pulp novels, B-movies, and various haunted house amusements.

Does that pedigree make it any easier to take ShadowKeep seriously? Not really. Only converted fans of this genre are likely to derive much sustained enjoyment from this. In order to be qualified to review this music for that audience, one must be totally immersed and totally invested in the subculture it represents. This creates a paradox, as the more invested you are in the genre, the less objective you become in evaluating the music within it, and the more you resort to cheerleading for it, trying to fortify the resolve of the devoted in staying true to something most people gave up on along with their 20-sided dice upon graduating from middle school. Suffice it to say this: If you are not immediately put off by the cover art, its probably in your interests to investigate ShadowKeep further.