Diagonal – The Second Mechanism

After their awesome debut in 2008 the english progsters Diagonal are releasing their second album “The Second Mechanism”. The album contains five songs which all of them except the first one are very long and very progressive. For the people who aren’t familiar with the band, as they state on their official website “Diagonal is a Progressive Rock band from Brighton, UK.Thunderous and hypnotic; euphoric and brutal, Diagonal is uncompromising in its approach and fearless in the creation of music which combines Prog, Jazz, Psych, Krautrock and Metal into an intense and explosive mixture which seems to belong to neither past, present nor future, yet somehow sounds like all three.”

The album opens with the track “Voyage Paralysis”, the shortest track of the album. Having never heard of or listened to this band before, it is at 3:14 that I realize that this is jazz music. At 4:36 a guitar riff turns spooky once the synthesizers enter the mix, hearing this you can find yourself a bit paranoid. The thematic melodies remind you epic movie scenes like Star Wars or Star Trek. “These Yellow Sands” is a great winner for me as it reminds me favourite paranoid artists such as Frank Zappa and Weather Report. As the song builds its groove, the drums expand offering warm tones to the beautiful melodies with exceptional precision.

“Mitochondria” starts out with a weird melody which reminds you again of Zappa. Through the whole song the guitars remain Zappistic accompanied saxophone parts. The music in this song reminds also the older Stanley Clarke records. Towards the end we turn again to rock as the song changes to a more 70’s rock stoner feeling.“Hulks” is a weird track, it throws us some vocals into the mix, while the lack of vocals is apparently a big disadvantage for the band. The vocals invoke that of a cosmic minstrel crooning amidst gothic sounding “oooo’s” and “oohh’s” from female voices in the distance. Then the saxophone comes in and well..it’s like the rest of the music on this album: Jazzy and weird.

“Capsize” ends the record just as mysterious as it began. Then it gets kind of cool as it evolves into an up tempo space age groove.This record is awesome, but only recommended for those who like weird and jazzy stuff, I’m a guy who grew up with rock metal and jazz so I like it but for those who are more straight rock or straight metal guys I dont recommend it. Only for opend minded people!