Cryptic Ruse – Chains Of Smoke


Microtonal music artist Jason Yerger’s project Cryptic Ruse (formerly City of the Asleep) – now with actual microtonal guitars! – returns to show us his new and masterfully crafted work: Chains of Smoke.

Using three different exotic tuning systems – 13 EDO, 15 EDO, and 23 EDO (EDO stands for Equal Divisions of the Octave) – and a wide palette of musical genres, Jason makes us travel to never-before heard sonic landscapes. By using “oriental” and “middle-oriental”-sounding tunings with a more standard (for us, westerners!) metal band quatuor instrumentation, with due distortion, riffs, … Read more

XYAX – Ode to the Universe (in three parts)

XYAX is Dave Tremblay and Ben Norton. XYAX is self-described as “22nd-century electronic un-metal un-music”.

Lyrics are presented on their site: XYAX.net

We all love albums that give us “out of this world” experiences. Well XYAX’s entire concept is to bring you that. XYAX does what modern technical death metal and progressive bands fail to do on a daily basis. XYAX does not feed you a riff salad and actually brings you something that is truly innovate in it’s vocal approach, song structures, rhythmic diversity, and production values.

Even with being so technical and having many layers, “Ode to the … Read more