Algebra – Chiroptera

Share this on Facebook | Share this on Twitter

Even though I am sixty years old, and have been a Metalhead for some 45 years now, I just never get tired of finding out about and discovering bands that have eluded me before. Sometimes you get a brand-new musical endeavour that blows you away. At other times it could be a band that has been going for a while, but hasn’t come into your radar range yet. This is a case of the latter.

I really hadn’t heard of the band ALGEBRA before I started to listen to their new album “Chiroptera”. And I started to wonder why, because these Swiss Thrashers know how to make their music work. When I started to investigate, I found out that they have been going on for a while now, from  onwards, to be exact. “Chiroptera” is their fourth album to date. They actually played in my country The Netherlands recently, and as I didn’t attend the show I asked my friends who were there if ALGEBRA were any good. It was Henri van Dommelen who answered that as far as he was concerned, any CORONER fans out there could buy the ALGEBRA albums blind. And I do know CORONER, as I have some of their music and have seen them perform live.

And I have to concur with my friend, especially due to the way the vocals sound. There is a difference though. I feel that musically speaking ALGEBRA is a lot more accessible than CORONER ever was. Yes, they do have the breaks, the different rhythms and tempos, but they feel a lot easier to listen to. Or is it that throughout the years our ears have gotten used to a lot more ‘difficult-to-listen-to’ music. Beats me. What I do know is that I feel that my friend is missing another rather important reference, which is early PRONG. Spanning from their Hardcore days up to the “Cleansing” period, the influences are definitely there. Mix all those together and you will be listening to “Chiroptera”. And because ALGEBRA write good songs, the quality of the album is way above par.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, I hadn’t heard of ALGEBRA before, so this has been quite a pleasant exploration into the Swiss alps and their musical effects. And if “Chiroptera” and the quality it is showing is anything to go by, I have a lot of backtracking to do on ALGEBRA. Well, gives me something to do, I suppose.

Songwriting: 8
Musicianship: 8
Memorability: 8
Production: 8