A little bit of everything good
Every country is guilty of ignoring music that is generated outside of their borders, especially when that music isn’t in the same language. This has been happening for ages, and no one is to blame, you connect more easily with music that speaks to your culture, especially when the lyrics to the music are among its most important elements. The issue is when this barrier gets in the way of some truly innovative music coming from foreign countries. One of the most often ignored countries is Japan, which is one of the truest shames in the music industry. As a country, they are at the forefront of Jazz, Neo-Classical, and Noise, and have consistently been releasing some of the best albums in those genres for over two decades. The newest release from Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, begs the question, what do you do when something comes from within your country, but sounds foreign. In the case of their album Dirt, the answer should be “listen to it.”
Despite their far east sound, Yamantaka // Sonic Titan hails from Toronto, Canada, and are more than willing to blend extreme music, pop and far eastern influences into a veritable melting pot of sound. The result could easily have been a terrible, half-baked mish-mash of garbage, but instead it all somehow works together.
Kicking off the album, “Karonhiake” leads the listener to believe that this will be another Japanese metal album, and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with those, they do follow a somewhat predictable pattern that is exemplified through the songs lulls interspersed with massive bursts of sound. Then “Someplace” starts and the vision for the record becomes clear. “Someplace” could have been on a Phoebe Bridgers or Novo Amor album, in fact, the twinkling guitars and reverberated vocals are so jarring that it seems likely that there was an issue in the download or pressing. As soon as you get up to check that you put the right record on the table, the guitars fly into a smooth noodling before it blows into all-out metal at around two minutes in.
With the album thesis finally clear, the listener is opened to a blend that seems impossible, pop, indie folk, and metal, all playing in perfect harmony. In fact, it may be one of the crowning achievements in music to date, there is, quite literally something for everyone in this album. From the fan of noise to the person who can’t so much as stand a modicum of grit in their listening. “Dark Waters” intro could have been made by Earth, as much as “Hungry Ghost” could have been made by Poe. It’s a dragon’s nest of musical influences married together in a way so expertly that it has rarely been done outside of The Dear Hunter’s The Color Spectrum, in fact, Dirt might be even more impressive because it does all of that multiple times in the same song.
The world is wide, and the breadth of musical influences that span it are even wider. Yamantaka // Sonic Titan is an expert example of the madness that can result when someone takes the music from foreign countries seriously. There is, simply put, nothing out there like this, one moment you’re listening to a pop song, then the next you’re being treated to black metal jazz. The craziest thing is that is somehow all works. This album demands to be heard, we should all give in.
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