Animals as Leaders recently released The Brain Dance as a single for their upcoming album, The Madness of Many, due November 11th. It’s not really what you’d expect from an AaL song, as it’s centered around an acoustic guitar lick. There’s no information as of now on who is actually playing that part, but my guess would be Javier Reyes. Why? Well, in 2012, he released a solo EP under the Mestís moniker. ‘Basal Ganglia‘ was exploring the merger of djent with Latin music and flamenco. Most of the songs on the album were played on an 8-string electric guitar, but would’ve been just as fine played on a classical guitar just like this one, which Javier recently acquired.- ‘Basal Ganglia‘
Basal Ganglia was great, emotional, and I think succeeded in approaching djent music from a different angle. Unfortunately, this seems to have been lost for their debut album, Polysemy, which came out late last year. It’s a really good album, but it has lost the charm that made songs like Te mato and Luz y cielo memorable.
Now, with AaL‘s new single, there’s hope that we will see a proper spiritual successor to Basal Ganglia. Since The Brain Dance is the only song available, we can only speculate. Chances are the whole album will be axed towards electric guitar, as the band’s previous albums were, but there’s a glimmer of hope. We can dream!
Prog Talk 