Too much tech for this Tuesday? No, of course not. Mathcore has been making a huge comeback over the last few years, and that comeback is only intensifying. More and more bands chock-full of riffs, insanity, jazz, and wit are cropping up. Enter one of the latest additions: Kilpréz, a one-man band by Jon Thor Sigurleifsson, based out of Stockholm, Sweden. And with the debut album Patron Saint of Lost Causes, Kilpréz is ready to unleash a dizzying mad dash of mathcore with plenty of prog and jazz.
“Redundancy of Role” opens like a tech-death track and is even treated like a tech-death track for about half its run time. Though vocally I doubt anyone would label it such, the instrumentation is nonetheless some wild opening stuff. As the track moves into its second half it becomes an expose of breakdowns and then unleashes with a blazing solo. It goes quick and the project and the project sounds a lot like it is drawing some inspiration from the mighty Psyopus.
There are a lot of sounds that encompass Kilpréz though. Patron Saint of Lost Causes is a loaded album on sound and emotion. The album is largely about having empathy for a world that is awash in apathy and finding purpose amongst it all. A valiant endeavor, one that is delivered with some plenty of harsh screams, sung sections, and other sass sections. Tracks like “Forever For Now” are massive sounding and contain a lot more prog and jazz than they do mathcore. It is also a much more serious-sounding song despite some sections. Meanwhile the following track “Delete The Elite” is dripping with the kind of sarcastic sections one might find in a Callous Daoboys track.
If you enjoy bands like the aforementioned Psyopus or The Sound That Ends Creation, or the Callous Daoboys but if they were all seen through the lens of Between The Buried and Me. It is difficult to pin down the project. And as a whole, Patron Saint of Lost Causes is a dizzying experience with plenty of layers to peel back. For those into tech but not into mathcore, this might be the album that sells you on it. Ture madness.
