Style: Progressive metal, djent, jazz fusion (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: later The Contortionist, Animals as Leaders, Scale the Summit, Arch Echo
Country: Costa Rica
Release date: 23 August 2024
Djent—no, wait, don’t leave, I promise this goes somewhere good! Djent is a contentious genre, right down to whether it’s a genre1 or not. The benthic lows, wonky grooves and dissonance have come to define modern progressive metal, whether it’s in undistilled form via Meshuggah and Animals as Leaders, or inveigling its way into the sound of more traditional progressive metal bands like Haken and Caligula’s Horse. Djent has become a sort of cliche in the modern scene, one that often repels as many listeners—myself included—as it attracts. But when incorporated with finesse and complexity, it can be a valuable asset in a band’s arsenal.
Consider Costa Rican outfit Giant Sleeper and their debut album Hyperliminal, which took five years to complete—time enough to incorporate the djent influence well, one would hope. Straddling a broad sonic territory and composed half of instrumentals and half of vocal-led tracks, their sound—replete with thick djent grooves, noodling jazzy bass work and a surfeit of time signature changes and polyrhythms—collects and blends influences such as Cynic, Scale the Summit, Animals as Leaders, and the lighter side of The Contortionist into a well-blended mix. While the vocal led tracks are a little more structurally reigned in, the instrumentals allow the band to stretch out. That’s by no means to undersell the playing in the non-instrumentals; “Well Adjusted” has frantically changeable rhythms to make the head spin. Djent, with its angular riff style, often struggles with smooth transitions, but Giant Sleeper have a great sense of flow, a compositional logic that allows the various disparate parts to cohere in a way that’s pleasing.
“Elucidate” opens with dreamy melodies akin to The Contortionist, with Massimo Pericolo’s soft vocals providing a lighter melodic contrast to the inherent complexity of the riff surplus. “Well Adjusted” sees the band at their most Thank You Scientist, with funky wah licks, thick djent riffs, and bombastic brass competing to keep up with the constant rhythmic sidewinding. Meanwhile, the instrumentals “Ultracrepidarian” and “The Grudge Process I” allow the band to show off their skills, the former leaning into Exivious and Scale the Summit levels of intricacy with an incredibly tasty bass solo, the latter a dynamic banquet of rhythmic textures with tasty bass work, ethereal lead lines and reverb-laden clean picked guitar alongside interspersions of pulsating djent.
If Giant Sleeper have a fault it’s that their ambition and talent sometimes comes at the expense of the compositions. While their sense of flow between sections is impeccable, some tracks have too much going on—“Well Adjusted” and “The Grudge Process II” being the chief offenders. “Part of Me” stands as the exemplar of what the band can do when they focus their skills on serving the song. Additionally, some of the more cliched djent riffs grow a little tiresome—Giant Sleeper mix things up frequently, so these sections don’t tend to overstay their welcome, but it’s the rhythmic interplay of bass, guitar and drums that proves more engaging than the repeated skronky bending of the low A string.
It’s worth diving further into “Part of Me” which is easily the most tightly composed track on the album, less prone to flashy excess and more concentrated on serving the song. The guitar solo at 4:50 is an album highlight with an underpinning staccato rhythm of deft touch leading us into a crescendo beneath a spoken word sample (of Jordan Peterson2 rambling about meaning, mind you, but it fits the song better than most such samples). It’s a strong finale and ends on a rather beautiful note—“But even so/I know wherever I go/That the night will be warm/It’s been that way all along”—and stands as testament to what Giant Sleeper can achieve when they target their talents.
Mixed by Adam Bentley of Arch Echo and mastered by Tony Lindgren of Fascination Street Studios, Hyperliminal sounds better than most debuts, with a well-balanced mix, and a cinematic sheen. Pericolo’s soft vocals could be a weakness but are bolstered by a layering of gorgeously blended harmonies that turn his fragile melodies into an asset. The bass, too, rides high in the mix, which is great because Pedro Gomez Ovares may well be the album’s highlight in a record full of them for his noodly bass solos and wandering riffs.
Hyperliminal is a bold addition to a unique niche within the progressive metal sphere with some truly stunning performances. At their best, Giant Sleeper can do some phenomenal stuff, at their worst, they can get a little lost in the weeds while still wowing you. However, overall Giant Sleeper can rest easy (and, er, giantly?), the five years they spent honing this debut were well worth it.
Recommended tracks: Elucidate, Ultracrepidarian, Part of Me
You may also like: The Resonance Project, Sound Struggle, Hypnagone, Our Oceans
Final verdict: 7.5/10
- “Don’t you mean ‘djenre’, hahaha.” Do I fuck, get the hell out of here. ↩︎
- Up yours, woke moralists. We’ll see who cancels who. ↩︎
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Independent
Giant Sleeper is:
– Massimo Pericolo (guitars, vocals)
– Pedro Gomez Ovares (bass)
– Jose Ignacio Gonzalez (guitars)
– Horacio Paris (drums)
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