![]() ![]() Nowhere is that as evident as on Parrhesia, the band’s ambitious fifth album, arriving in a post-pandemic world after the longest stretch between Animals As Leaders albums since 2009’s self-titled debut. Quickly ascending beyond the traditional confines of instrumental rock, the trio boast a unique blend of precision and organic feel. The music they make appeals equally to fans of Tool, Dream Theater, and Charlie Hunter, audiences as diverse as they are dedicated. Steve Vai described the first album as “the future of creative, heavy virtuoso guitar playing.” The Aquarian wrote, “Abasi’s music has as much in common with Vai as it does Meshuggah, Victor Wooten or Allan Holdsworth.” Tosin enlisted Reyes to support the album live, and the pair’s creative guitar partnership persists. ![]() Modern Drummer put Garstka on the cover, a year before he sat in with NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers. Rolling Stone featured him in their “Young Guns” series. “His musical ideas are so creative, so colorful, and so unique relative to everything else going on in their general sphere of guitar-based music, that he just puts everyone to shame.” In one of his many appearances on their cover, Guitar World named him among the Guitarists of the Decade. “Tosin Abasi is probably, on some ‘objective’ level, one of the top ten guitarists of all time,” they wrote. The Chicago Tribune called Abasi “the closest thing prog-metal has to an Eddie Van Halen.” MetalSucks is similarly enthusiastic. Animals As Leaders began as a solo outlet for guitarist Tosin Abasi, whose creative partnership with classically trained guitarist / audio engineer Javier Reyes and Berklee-educated drummer Matt Garstka is built on a shared love of everything from fusion to technical death metal. The band’s diverse catalog plays like multiple seasons of a superb television series, the shows with consistent themes and characters throughout their runs which evolve without sacrificing their most essential elements. As Pitchfork observed, “Animals As Leaders have walked the tightrope between sheer technical virtuosity and actual emotional resonance.” Even without vocals, this is intimate, mythmaking music. But ANIMALS AS LEADERS jettisoned the rules, limitations, and boundaries of conventional rock music from the start.Īrmed with palette-expanding eight-string guitars, rich synths, and pummeling percussive grooves, the trio is beloved by metalheads, aspiring virtuosos, jazz fanatics, and casual listeners alike. It might sound strange to associate “storytelling” with instrumental music. “As satisfying in their visceral kick as they are in dazzling displays of dexterity.” – Rolling Stone
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