Inquisitor – The Quantum Theory of Id (2010) Review

I was initially going to review each individual song from this album, but as I jotted down notes while listening to the album, I realized that I had pretty much the same thing to say about each song.  Generally speaking, the music is good.  It’s a solid listen.  The music changes tempo fairly frequently, itis dynamic, it’s always going somewhere…the problem is that these songs are all approximately ten minutes long, so they should be covering a lot of ground.  However, they don’t feel like there’s enough going on to warrant ten minutes worth of music.  Most of these songs would, I think, be stronger if they were 5-6 minutes long.

As for the instruments, they’re pretty good and the band uses piano quite a bit to add a more complicated melody.  Generally speaking, the moments with the piano are the best since at those moments the drums tend to become more interesting and the guitar will play an interesting harmony.  The music without the piano can tend to get repetitive, since there aren’t too many moments where the guitar or drums do something extraordinary.  Don’t get me wrong, the music is interesting and it demands your attention while it’s playing, but for an avant-garde band the sound doesn’t seem terribly avant-garde beyond the tempo changes.

I didn’t enjoy the vocals from this album a whole lot, they were far less dynamic than the rest of the music.  They didn’t seem to be a major focal point, though.  I thought the sound of the screeching was often inappropriate for the sound of the instruments underneath it.  There were maybe two or three times on the album when the vocals mellowed out and became a lower growl.  Those moments were far more beautiful than the rest of the album.

My hope for Inquisitor’s next album is for them to work on their composition.  I think they have enough talent to play songs that are 10 minutes long, they just need the composition to match up.  Alternatively, they could be more concise with their current sound and make the next album full of songs in the 5-6 minute range.  I also hope the singer learns to sing/screech more appropriately with the music that’s being played.  Even if he wants his voice to stand out, it should sound like it belongs to the music that’s being played.

Overall, I did enjoy this album and I thought that it had many strong moments, which made its weaknesses stand out even more.  I would definitely recommend that you give these guys a listen.

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