Engineering the Rule

Gnostic: Chris Baker (guitar); Jonathan Thompson (bass guitar); Steve Flynn (drums).
Personnel: Kevin Freeman (vocals); Chris Baker, Sonny Carson (guitar).
Recording information: Ledbelly Studios, Canton, GA.
After cutting their teeth on some of the most challenging and inventive extreme metal ever conceived, as members of the re-formed, new millennium touring lineup of legendary Floridian death/jazz architects Atheist, guitarists Sonny Carson and Chris Baker decided to put their unique "education" to good use. They formed Gnostic, and set about exploring the limits of their own jazz and prog-inflected death metal with 2009's ENGINEERING THE RULE. Their particular recipe also contains trace elements of math-metal and deathcore. Textbook Gnostic riff collisions such as "Visceral," "Isolate Gravity," and "Violent Calm" stop, start, and turn on a dime before thrashing off in wholly unexpected new directions. They rarely divert into "true" examples of jazz except for very brief interludes, but rather take inspiration from the genre's restless arrangements and unorthodox time signatures, leaving it to serpentine melodic scales to weave in and out of the reigning organized. Gnostic succeeds in delivering a mind-twisting LP.