Textures - Polars

Textures are a relatively young band which has his origins in the dutch city of Tilburg and its surrounding towns. The band has been playing in this current line-up since the summer of 2001. All the members had experience with previous bands, and at the end of 2001 they actually started recording demo tracks in their own self-financed rehearsal room / studio. The recording process of Polars took quite some time, probably due to the band who kept changing the songs, and polishing here and there. But the end result is amazing, especially for a self-produced record.

Its quite hard to describe Textures; the rhytmic influences from Meshuggah are noticable, its clear that guitarists Jochem Jacobs, Bart Hennephof and bassist Dennis Aarts like to listen to Frederik Thordendal. The use of synthesizers (by Richard Rietdijk) reminded me alot of how Devin Townsend "textures" his own music, and the drumming (by Stef Broks) struck me as an experimental death-metal fan who likes to incorporate some fusion influences, creating a pretty diverse sounding drumsound. The vocals, mainly being done by singer Pieter Verpaalen, who utilizes a hardcore style of singing, are confident sounding and well executed.

The songs themselves are quite diverse, with title track "Polars" being a great example of a "typical" Textures song. It has heavy riffs, a nice synth/electronic passages, and good use of dynamics. It runs for about 18 minutes, and basically is 3 or 4 songs combined to one epic-one.

"Young Man" starts with a riff that could be in an In Flames song, but with a nice rhytmical twist to it, quickly followed by a melodic synth melody, combining the two before it rambles on into heavy parts.

Another ear-catcher is Transgression, which has a melodic saxophone interlude, after which a feriocious riff kicks in. Another great song which shows the versatility of this band. Effluent is more of an instrumental intro to Polars, and the closer of the disc, Heave, is a 14-minute instrumental as well. Very abstract and atmospheric, and I found myself listening to it quite a few times.

This cd is very impressive, knowing that it comes from a band who didnt play extensively long together, produced and designed everything themselves and manage to play pretty much around the country, all in a 2-year time frame. The only thing I can say is that the only way to top this cd is that the band has to spend more time practicing and rehearsing together, trying to put the level of playing and musicianship even higher. Math-metal, prog-core, whatever you want to call it, its worldclass.

1. Swandive
2. Ostensibly Impregnable
3. Young Man
4. Transgression
5. The Barrier
6. Effluent
7. Polars
8. Heave