While admired for its creative and inspiring musical prowess, the world of technical death metal has in some sense seen a little saturation in recent times. This is a very dangerous thing to say. At least from the perspectives of trends, the ideas that made up this genre became very typical cliches. It’s always been about the blasts and the sweeps. The whole process while being a mark of human excellence now felt more like a mechanical process. Over sheer creativity, technical death metal became a packaged deal of sorts. Perhaps most things in music are actually such packages for they create a genre. Things take a turn for the worse when they stop feeling uninspiring and dangerously cold and mechanical. Keeping this packaged deal in mind, NYN comes with it’s own sweet deal- oodles of mind blowing inspiration. NYN is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist song writer and vocalist Noyan Tokgozolu. Noyan teams up with the ever amazing musicians in the guise of guitarist extraordinaire Tom “Fountainhead” Geldschläger and keyboard/synth genius Jimmy Pitts. Noyan’s brilliant compositions coupled with the magic of Fountainhead and Jimmy Pitts created something nothing short of brilliance in the form of the NYN’s ‘Entrophy: Of Chaos and Salt.’
The album opens up with a short instrumental track “The Mind Inverted” which really is a very modest introduction to the madness that follows suit. “The Apory of Existence” is really the thing we’ve been missing for a long time as far as existence goes. This song is a huge leap from the opening song in terms of impact and technicality. I did expect the music to intensify past the first song but I did not expect such a scale. It was only then when I realized that I got a mad powerhouse of an album which was sincere in its efforts to push the entire premise of technical metal to newer heights. “Omnipotence Paradox” is a fine blend of tech death traditions with Jimmy Pitts absolute madness on keyboards and synths, which add so much more color and contrast to the already beautifully textured music. I think by now it’s really pointless to bring out the whole ‘technical’ aspect of the music knowing the insane potential of the musicians behind this album- they are pretty much capable of very alien standards in music. Technicality goes hand in hand with the names of this trio. This album really makes many other technical album look like a walk in the park.
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“Dissimulating Apologia” is a point in the album where there are a lot of interesting things happening. It starts off with some overtone singing accompanied with an interesting start on the keys and eventually being joined by the drums and rest of the band later. This creates a mix of emotions. It’s really hard to figure out what to feel or how to feel about it. There’s nothing negative to feel about this song. This song is full of emotion and is quite fluid within its own maddening technical nuances. The grows on the song still do not make the song any less wonderfully fluid. “Rebirth: Rebuild, Advance, Redo” shows an aspect of technical death metal/progressive not often acknowledged fully. It shows how accommodating this genre of music really is. This song showcases the empty spaces a tech death song can create for the sake of some ambiguity and make it open to literally any kind of fusion idea in the process. The synth and guitar leads on this song could fit into literally any musical context without the need to be sounding traditionally metal. The leads fit so beautifully in song. This song shows how tech death and progressive music can create empty spaces and ambiguous elements where anything in context (or even out of) can actually fit into these empty spaces.
“Embrace Entropy” is my favorite song off this record. This song is madly inspiring! The work on the fretless guitars is stunning. The growls and screams add so much feel to the music. The fretless guitars are certainly arranged and played in context to heavier and technical metal but the music and arrangements are open to sit into other forms of neoclassical and folk traditions. There’s oodles of Taqsim and Maqam music inspiration all over this song. These influences seemed to be slightly recurring often through out the album but they solidify their presences on this song. The song ends wonderfully with Fountainhead playing the Oud accompanied by Noyan on the Darbuka. This song too highlights the accommodating side of extreme metal by playing non-traditional arrangements in context to extreme metal with much ease.
“Taken Away By The Tides” starts out sounding very odd in context to the album. But then knowing NYN, it was best that I didn’t reserve any ideas about the music, not knowing what to expect. The synth and old school guitar intro is characterized by some very signature Jimmy Pitts playing style. But before you know it, the old school sounds suddenly changes to the typical NYN sound and swings between styles. It’s mind numbing to try and understand how can one be so fluid in switching styles so explicitly in the music. Nevertheless, it is very spellbinding and magical. The small piano section acts as a small breather in this awesome song. The song ends on a really epic solo which is heavily layered.
‘Entropy: Of Chaos And Salt’ simply speaking is out of this world. If the idea of madness were to ever sound good, it would be this album. This album can easily make many instrumentalists (including me) to take a hard look at ourselves and rework many things from scratch, or better yet, it can inspire people to take up an instrument. This makes the album a very important one and a landmark record in its own right. The record takes in many cliches of extreme metal and makes them so much better. It’s able to incorporate a massive musical and sonic diversity within the area of extreme metal by exploiting the empty spaces that music can create, no matter how technical or not. NYN is able to work out their music in context in this scenario and I see no reason why they wouldn’t be able to fit anything else in literally any musical context. This really is the excellence of fusion and the virtue of musicianship. This album is full of both. Fountainhead’s production is a new high on this record. The level of details that can be heard is astonishing. The lyrics on the record are full of interesting ideas and musings. It’s only great that Noyan found a way to fit them into a musical context he found right.
All in all, this record is a new standard for extreme and progressive metal and a good example of diverse arrangements and styles within the context of metal.