As Steven Wilson writes in the introduction to the book "Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal", Metal has been a place where free spirits could find refuge to make cutting-edge music throughout the past two or three decades, and although Metal may ironically - given it's self-styling as a counter-cultural genre - sometimes fell too safe with all it's nostalgia for the past and the beery bro-Metal clichés, there is no doubt that it continues to be this way. Fusion with or incorporation of ideas or techniques from Avant-Garde music - contemporary Classical or Jazz - is nothing new, it goes all the way back to ATHEIST and GORGUTS or to the musical projects of the free Jazz musician John Zorn, who has, among other things, put out a split with NAPALM DEATH.

ZEVIOUS are a New York based trio with members active in a number of other bands, notably the instrumental Progressive band DYSRHYTHMIA. They started out in 2007 as a Jazz group, but soon they started gravitating more towards Rock and Metal. "Lowlands" is their fourth full-length album, this time around put out by the indie label Nefarious Industries. It shouldn't come as a surprise that ZEVIOUS play instrumental music. Good instrumental Rock or Metal albums are, as far as I'm concerned, rather an exception to the rule, but since we're dealing here with an experimental band, a band that is closer in spirit to "pure" or artistic music, I had high expectations for this release.

The first track "Tube Lord" sets the tone for the album: dark and trippy, written around a noodly jazz-oid riff. It starts off slowly and the intensity gradually builds up to a frenetic finale. The song "Smear Campaign" sounds as ominous as its title. It shifts between shrill rhythmic cords and tremolo picked playing, and has a dramatic buildup with the finale almost evoking a scene in a thriller movie where someone is fighting for his life. "Slaves of Rotor" is a slow tempo song but has a rally nice groove. Its atmosphere is melancholic but somehow soothing, not disquieting as the majority of the song.

"Ritual Based Symmetries" is shorter piece built around small melodic motifs of the lead guitar (or variations of them), which are used as a springboard for the bass and drum to go crazy (especially the rumbling bass is really nicely mixed on the album). "Null Island" shifts between a sinister sounding lick and a chill groove, the song has a nice atmospheric bridge - it sounds ethereal in a Post-Rock kind of way. "Sensor Recall" is the heaviest piece here in my estimation. It is fast, groovy and even has a Death Metal sounding riff coming from the left field after certain intervals. The eight minutes long closer "Slow Reach" is a really nice track: a dynamic composition that goes through different motions. To me it feels like a hallucinatory vision where a lot is going on that somehow makes sense but it is out of the grasp of our analytical intellect.

These guys definitely knows what they are doing when it comes to composing songs and playing their instruments. Ideas in every song are nicely developed and the band works as one organism - there is no overplaying or senseless noodling just for the show. If you ask me, this is another cool "Avant-Garde" band from New York - a city that has given birth to a number of cool acts that play music that is a bit "out there" such as KRALLICE, DYSRHYTHMIA, or IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT. It may not be music for your average Metal bro, but that shouldn't be the standard by which to measure the quality of a band's effort.