Friday: Monobody - Lifeguard of a Helpless Body

     I'm going to stick with the vaguely jazzy pseudo-theme that's been running through the last week (or more) in choosing something a little more chill for your belated Friday song. Don't worry though, I'm not surreptitiously morphing this into an instrumental jazz blog, and we'll be back in more metal territory before you know it. And hey, your Thursday song was some old-school-meets-new-school death metal from Italy's Human Improvement Process, so quit complaining!

     Quit complaining and check out Chicago's Monobody, an instrumental electro-jazz quintet with the interesting quirk of having two bassists on much of their material. But don't look at it as something gimmicky; instead just get into one of the many cool grooves that either Al Costis or Steve Marek (or both!) lay down with drummer Nnamdi Ogbonnaya.

     There's a lot of fun stuff going on on Monbody's self-titled debut LP, making it a "must check out" for anybody who's into this kind of thing. And anybody who's not into this kind of thing should have a listen to album opener "Lifeguard of a Helpless Body" and get into this kind of thing, OK?

Thursday: Human Improvement Process - Tortured Hands of Reason

     Once again, the track I've picked for your belated Thursday song isn't Throwback per se, but it does have a bit of old school flavour -- old school death metal flavour, to be precise. But this tasty death metal flavour is actually brand new school, and international to boot.

     Human Improvement Process might hail from Italy, but their brand of death metal would sound at home coming from just about anywhere that death metal gets done. Take "Tortured Hands of Reason", from the band's EP Enemies of the Sun, for an example. It's just got all the elements it needs to slay: riffs, grooves, blast beats, even a little leadwork. If this kind of thing is your bag, you will dig these guys, so check 'em out.