Void

Released without warning or hype in January of 2006, Intronaut's debut EP, Null, helped get the year started on the right foot, and instantly nominated the brand new group for the exalted office of Extreme Progressive Metal Ministers, only recently vacated by Atlanta's increasingly mainstream-embracing Mastodon. With their full-length follow-up of barely six months later, the logically named Void, Intronaut arguably consolidated their candidacy with seven new tracks of equal, if not greater compositional merit than what had come before — although their debt to Mastodon's early works, as well as predecessors like Today Is the Day and Lethargy, remained not only obvious but, some may argue, overpowering. In any event, notable Void offerings like "Gleamer," "Nostalgic Echo," and "Rise to Midden" proved almost as demanding, yet rewarding, to digest, as they no doubt were for Intronaut to conceive and perform: positively head-spinning in their technicality and improbably heavy, to boot. But, as was the case with that promising EP, these challenging songs frequently reveal moments of astonishing calm and even beauty amid their semi-intelligible, grunted vocals and Byzantine arrangements; including the swathes of atmospheric "intro(naut)spection" found within the continent-shifting riff tectonics of "Fault Lines" and "Iceblocks," and the jazzy breakdowns interspersed among the metallic hyperactivity of "Teledildonics" and "A Monolithic Vulgarity." All of which contribute to Intronaut's, thus far, very strong and consistent musical platform for office, leaving only the verdict of those voters or listeners who might turn up at the polls, and there's no reason why shouldn't show up en mass.