Black inside black over black (Now in Technicolor)

Spectrum by Am I in Trouble? — This is the best progressive metal album (Death, Blackened, Trad or otherwise) by an American band since Wilderun’s 2019 masterpiece Veil of Imagination.

And I say that realizing that this is exactly the kind of record that ties into knots the tongues of the “what genre is it?” crowd. But this album is about so much more than tiresome genre debates. I also say this realizing that this album has the twin hex (in terms of any hesitancy someone may have in expressing too great a public opinion of it) of being a "solo" project (whatever that means) and a debut album. Nonetheless, I'm more than willing to be wrong in the sighing eyes of whatever future sensibilities judge this album.

It's been nearly six months since Spectrum was released, so I've had more than enough time to take it in and re-appraise my initial thoughts about it. I've had more than enough time to change my mind about it. To capture the way I truly felt. To be more critical.

Nevertheless.

Wanna play "sounds like"? Nope. Doesn't work. How about "would make sense on the same bill as (time machine included)" instead. Arcturus, yeah. Orchid-era Opeth? Hmm. Anthems-era Emperor? Or is it latter Ihsahn? Does it have to be metal at all? How about in support of the plaintive harmonies of an indie band like the long lost Be of the "Corporal's Daughter"?

But I digress, because the more obvious hypothetical stage-mate would be Solefald. Because there is something in the ontological makeup of AIIT — something in the foundational semantic building blocks of the sound and approach and even vision, it seems — that is about a chemical categorization of the fracturing, splintering, and reassembly of all things — that is about the synthesis and cycling of molecules into chemical compounds.

Cycles
Twisting, spirals ending
Only to come back around

In this thought exercise, take genre out of the loop entirely. Just take in the shifting moods, playful and wistful entrances and exits, level of craft — and substance of songwriting — across the bifurcated shards of the, well, “spectrum”, that is represented here on Spectrum. And consider. Where Solefald’s World Metal naturally exhibits the European folk melody influence on the more Pop-oriented passages of its metal pastiche, AIIT hints (perhaps less explicitly) at a not dissimilar, but perhaps diametrically defined, wealth of influences (including said reference)— either directly or (even more interestingly) indirectly. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's one of the key things that makes this work.

The indirectness.

Like the behind-the-beat drawls and spoken word in "Red" — almost in the tonal and spiritual realm of I Against I.

Often, when we are listening to music, we are trying to contextualize from within. Meaning: we define what we hear through a lens of direct impression and association to other music, bands, and whathaveyou (that we at some point have internalized for whatever reason). Those categories that appear to be most relevant, or most similar, or most influential help us to put things in perspective in regard to whatever has captured our ears. But a record like Spectrum brings up the entire issue of indirect listening — maybe as a form of intertextual close listening. Given the choices made on the record (just listen to the bass within the context of the rising passages of the aforementioned "Red" and explain why the tone steps so far astride the sort of Black Metal that otherwise would be assumed to ground such chromaticism in the context of an extreme metal band). Why is such an easy stylistic choice to make — a Salieri-esque choice, as it were — so definitively eschewed, but without any fanfare or sense of obligation amongst the other instruments?

One can begin to discern the structural intent of what’s going on (what kind of building they are trying to hold up) by considering what is not included or what may only be alluded to more as a consideration or as a passing reference than as a core element. Because AIIT presents us with not an elemental world, but rather a world of molecular compounds. For the occultists amongst you, they are not working within view of the Watchtowers, because they are caught in the maelstrom of a thousand minor demons all clamoring to get a bite of the apple. Within that cloud writhes some kind of truth.

So, what writhes between the lines in the epic instrumental Blue? What are the fusions that have brought lines together — not just meandering and intertwined, but entangled as though through a crucible? Whatever is any of it? These shards, these myriad artifacts.

One of the things going on here is that in all of the obvious comparisons to AIIT, you are dealing with bands who have embodied the insertion of European musical traditions — especially folk melody — into the metal paradigm. Whereas on Spectrum, AIIT takes from that synthesized material and then carries it into a place that is not bashful about AOR vocal harmonies and clean guitars that have more in common with Queensrÿche than with European folk-metal.

It is maybe the reverse side of the coin represented by someone like Steven Wilson. Incubated on Hawkwind and King Crimson, when looking at American rock, he seems to be pulling from the likes of Todd Rundgren, Alice Cooper (more like Bob Ezrin, really), and Blue Öyster Cult but then mangling it into a new sound that is distinctly, well "removed" from American antecedents for lack of a better word, and re-inserted into the British paradigm. Likewise AIIT feels grounded in an East Coast style of production, but dwells amongst the furniture of the likes of Arcturus only to reconfigure it into something that sounds unlike — and even "removed" — from the Scandinavian antecedent.

By the time the opening salvo of Black comes around, it is as though you've felt that you've learned a new language. A language of emptiness. A language of what fills it.

Til it pours down your throat, plugs up the ears, fills up the lungs

In the end, and perhaps as a result of the urbanity of the influences cubed by the sophistication of the approach to composition, AIIT pull something off which often gets lost in the way that we talk about music. Namely, amongst all of the arpeggiated and mercurial movements and call-and-response between demonic voices and cool harmonies and all of the expansive guitar solos and the flashes of keys and electric pianos and metropolitan bass figures and all of it all of it all of it — AIIT has provided space to think. Unlike those experiences with music, and perhaps especially heavy music — where we gravitate towards the immediacy and repetition of riffs and the forward-propulsion and the ecstatic nature of it all — music like what AIIT have created is more cerebrally expansive (without being pedantic or assumptive) and is more revelatory (without being messianic) wherein by getting closer to musical realization we get closer to a sort of personal gnosis regarding the way that we think about music itself. And that is worth the trouble. | 4.5 out of 5 stars