We’re three months in 2020 already and a lot of crazy stuff has happened. Dealing with all the craziness of being an election year, Coronavirus, natural disasters (Puerto Rico had hundreds of earthquakes for the whole month of January), and a bunch of other strange situations seem to keep happening every day. But the question coming in the year was: “are the music releases going to keep coming as solid as they did in 2019?” and I believe that Intronaut’s Fluid Existential Inversions (Metal Blade Records) assure us that the year will still be as solid as the previous ones where we’ve been getting real quality music from bands that are consistent. Intronaut gives us a very interesting album that proves the musical dexterity of each one of the members of this Los Angeles band. Adding the services from drummer Alex Rudinger (ex-The Haarp Machine/ex-The Faceless) gives this record a major boost in the percussive side and makes the overall musical experience a very enjoyable one.

To classify Fluid Existential Inversions under one specific sub-genre is quite a predicament since the band offers a very interesting combination of Progressive Metal with some touches of Groove and Death Metal here and there. It’s the perfect record for musical nerds that want to analyze the complexity of the compositions in order to sit in a room and get their instruments and try to jam to these songs. I consider this album like the child of a mix between Gojira and The Contortionist. The balance between the Proggy and heavy parts in this album is very consistent and with a lot of interesting lines from all the musicians in the band. Tracks like ‘Pangloss’ and ‘Sour Everythings’ are the highlights of this album being that they bring some really catchy riffs that will have you headbanging and feeling them tasty riffs.

This is my first interaction with any of Intronaut’s music and, even though it is really well done, for the present stage of my musical taste it really does not do anything for me as far as evoking any feelings in me, but that doesn’t mean that this is a very, very solid album. Obviously, this is a great produced and performed album and fans of the band will definitely enjoy this album.

6 / 10

WESLIE NEGRON