Chimp Spanner: All Roads Lead Here

Do you know Paul Ortiz? No? Maybe you know him by his other i/d: Chimp Spanner? That one man instrumental djent outfit, you might say. But I don't believe in 'djent'. You can say what you want if you embrace this categorization (please, it's not a genre...) but I believe what's peddling now had been there all along. It used to be obscure because it's in the metal zone championed by extremists who churned out perplexing time signatures, only embraced by fellow extremists who are equally patient. That's not the case these days, yes? I'm not here to preach genre righteousness, I'm here to highlight the fact that Chimp Spanner made a choice to be heavy, technical, intellectual & more importantly, vocal-less. 

All Roads Lead Here is an EP, some of us deem buying such releases as senseless but this is a statement of intent; it's done by someone with knowledge (knowing what to do) AND capacity (knowing how to do it, not hiding behind one-offs). The 6 tracks contained here are very celestial but the music per se is downright heavy. What I like about Mr. Ortiz is his sensibility; all tracks were arranged to appeal to both riff mongers as well as the shred geeks, everything done tastefully- bravo! I have Cloud City (closing track) on repeat mode every evening, it's my ear fodder for the journey home. We have to thank Paul Ortiz & Tosin Abasi, among others, for giving us that little difference in this instrumental domain. We can't help but feel that guitar instrumental had been the exclusive provision for rockers, nobody really did something heavy & aggressive which is devoid of vocals (let's not forget Chris Poland & Jeff Loomis- they had some heavy stuff going). Maybe guitar instrumental is taking a turn this time round. People are now not afraid to go instrumental while keeping true to their nature. Enjoy this clip of Paul doing Mobius Part 1 (3rd track of this EP):