Style: progressive metal, jazz fusion, avant-garde jazz, free jazz, technical death metal (mostly instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: John Coltrane (late era), Weather Report, Imperial Triumphant, John Zorn
Country: New York, United States
Release date: 21 February 2025
Although born out of Western “art music” (i.e. classical and jazz), prog has long shunned a critical aspect of jazz: improvisation. Our favorite bands in the prog and metal scenes are anal with their precise compositions, unwilling to leave a single detail out of their control in an obsessive chasing of perfection. That’s what made the Big Apple’s Sarmat so refreshing when they hit the scene in 2023—although playing something texturally prog metal, the extended live jam session which made up their debut EP Dubious Disk was fully jazz in its improvisational spirit. After a more concentrated, composed tech death release later that year, Sarmat are now back with Upgrade, their second live-in-studio album of improvised fusion metal.
At two tracks and twenty-one minutes, Upgrade is a pocket-sized but powerful statement reaffirming that jazz composition with metal instrumentation can work and should be attempted by more bands. Of course, not all groups have the collective talents of members like Steve Blanco (bass, Imperial Triumphant), Ryan Hale (guitar), and James Jones (drums). That power trio alone present a heroic display on their instruments, contorting modal jazz into a distorted hellscape. Sarmat have other talented collaborators, though, like trumpeters Jerome Burns and Oskar Stenmark, as well as my personal favorite performer on Upgrade, Niko Hasapopoulos on upright bass. The members of this demented jazz collective are clearly all experienced jammers, their playing tight and in sync despite the fluid “compositional” style.
The shorter of the two tracks, opener “Serum Visions,” is superior to the title track that follows. On “Serum Visions,” Blanco drops his meaty bass for sci-fi synths, allowing for the elegance of the upright bass to clash with the wailing trumpets and power chords, and the synth-laden atmosphere creates a perfect backdrop for Sarmat to spawn their music ex nihilo. “Upgrade” is inferior precisely because of this: it’s less free, more composed. With a long section built around a variation of “Landmark” from Determined to Strike (their full-length album), “Upgrade” takes the banger tech death riff and attempts jam variations of it in an unbecoming way. Moreover, Ilya Beklo’s gutturals enter during the last third of the song, making the ending seem completely disjointed from the first sixteen minutes of the album—the vocals sick for a death metal release but more distracting than anything on a proggy release such as this. Their inclusion is frustrating, taking away from the sharp jazz focus and turning to a more Zorn-esque, pretentious eclecticism. The more composed sections suffer next to the organically improvised moments.
However, what separates Sarmat from the jazz greats of olde is the band’s lack of energy: yes, this group is noisy, benefiting from distortion, but only Jones’ drumming satisfies my craving for the transcendent experience of live free jazz. Upgrade desperately needs more along the lines of his frenetic, chaotic performance. At times, the rest match his intensity—especially Ilya Belko’s haunting screams put through inhuman distortion effects, from there stealthily breaking loose into a dramatic trumpet solo, at 3:40 into “Serum Visions”—but overall, despite the noise, nobody in the group really commands focus. In that sense, Upgrade could benefit from its performers alternating in a roundhouse fashion trading off solos like on Coltrane’s Ascension. Upgrade is too egalitarian with the focus, leading to fewer highlights and not showcasing the performers’ individual excellence.
Sarmat’s vision is valiant, and Colin Marston’s as-always excellent in-studio production provides the sound with crisp clarity, but the jam doesn’t excite me nearly as much as Dubious Disk did a couple years ago. While the EP isn’t so much an upgrade of Sarmat’s sound, the mission is clear: jazz and metal will collide in improvetory fashion, and Sarmat will lead the charge.
Recommended tracks: Serum Visions
You may also like: Behold the Arctopus, A.M.E.N., Dischordia, Tatsuya Yoshida & Risa Takeda, Electric Masada
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
Label: I, Voidhanger – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
James Jones – Drums: Tracks 1 and 2
Steve Blanco – Bass Guitar: Track 1, Keytar: Track 2
Zachary Blakeslee-Reid – Guitar: Track 1
Ryan Hale – Guitar: Track 2
Niko Hasapopoulos – Arm, Upright Bass: Track 2
Oskar Stenmark – Trumpet: Track 1
Jerome Burns – Trumpet: Track 2
Ilya Belko – Vocals : Track 1
