From Bandcamp, “FROGG is a modern technical metal band located in the Greater New York Metropolitan area with influences stemming from COB, BTBAM, GALNERYUS and OBCURA. The concept behind FROGG is simple: create modern heavy music while striving to show off some originality in an often, over-processed genre. FROGG’s main ambition is to hit the live circuit in NY and its surroundings with a tight performance.” The album has ten songs, and “Walpurgisnacht” is first. The opening tones are piano, guitar, and old school keyboards, and they segue into distorted guitars and some heavy, harsh vocals. From there, the band showcases a lot of technical proficiency with a five-course meal of many different sounds, including a heavy dose of dissonance.

“Life Zero” comes out of the gate with more technical brilliance, and the skies shift constantly from sunny and blue, to overcast and grey. Try to keep up with all of the meter shifts…it is impossible. One could say that it borders on pure madness at times, yet somehow, the band manages to maintain control. The next song has two movements. The first is a weighted plate of forward aggression, and their musicianship is about as strong as any band that I have heard lately. The second movement breathes a little more and shows that the band is as good at melody as it is naked aggression. Still, the heavy, technical side of the music outweighs any bright spots of melody.

“Wake Up” has a good combination of both of the extreme sides of music…heavy, dissonance, and melody. The bottom end of the song keeps moving and shifting, in areas that it would take you several listens to fully comprehend. “Sun Stealer” begins with Middle Eastern elements and tom drums, but segues into the controlled distortion and madness of previous tracks. At times, it even seems like the band is just toying with you, and they can probably play these compositions while they are tending to other things. “Double Vision Roll” is another song with carefully controlled chaos that is held at a very thin border. On the other side of the border is total anarchy, and they flirt with that at times. “Omni Trigger” closes the album and listen to the animated bass notes…they are about as tight as anything else I have heard this year.

Let’s start with the positives…the band is immensely talented, and their musicianship registers off the charts. Some constructive criticism? Some of the songs sound too sterile and technical for me. The little snippets of melody are very well done, and if they would let some of them linger a little longer, they would have more of an impact. Still, this is an album that every Metalhead should hear, for the technical brilliance alone.