CMJ Music Marathon 2008 Day 5: Dragons Of Zynth

I’m having welcome flashbacks to Melt-Banana’s “Cat Brain Land” and Queens Of The Stone Age’s “Six Shooter” here, but I can’t remember the last time I saw music this hectic in the flesh. Astonishingly, beneath all the howling and grunting there seems to be a genuine grasp of form: Push, pull, relax, and repeat. Which is to say—the riffs aren’t always the most pleasant thing to take in, and some of those chords would have probably managed to get guitarist Akwetey Orraca-Tetteh excommunicated back in the 1700s, but when the song ends, I feel like they’ve accomplished something, even if I have no clue what just happened.

—Vijith Assar