No growls, no clean vocals, no vocals at all; instrumental technical death metal provided by a single man, Luke Jaeger a guitar wiz from Seattle and this “Probing Tranquility” is his debut, a mighty debut. How ever “Sleep Terror” is a two man band, been Jaeger the one doing the Guitar, Bass, Keyboards and Drum Programming, and David McGraw taking care of the live drum work.
“Probing Tranquility” is a display of guitar playing that will let you drooling for more, and will make you wonder, why the hell didn’t Vile wanted to keep this guy for more than just a live guitarist?
The songs are short ranging from 1 to 2 minutes, in total half an hour of amazing riffs that carry different tempos and a great array of approaches, always applying death metal riffs and blending them with a couple of “jazzy” segments that gives “Probing Tranquility” a progressive dimension.
Its hard if not impossible to single out songs or tracks on this record, since they are so short and they all belong together, it’s a whole composition that can only be appreciated if play consecutive; splitting this record will be a crime and the song you listen could just be consider something like an intro instead of actually getting the idea behind each riff , so listen to this in order and the riffs will carry you through the record giving it dimension and a rhythm that will make you headbang even with all the abrupt tempo changes.
On the bad side the drums sound kind of fake, forcing the guitar to carry the album all the way, they do have some weight in a couple of tracks, but just for support and to establish the heaviness of a certain segment.
As a funny tip, on “Autoerotic Spy”, Jaeger plays a couple of riffs from one of my favorite pop songs My Sharona by The Knack, simply genius.
This album is refreshing, it makes you look at all those technical death metal bands in a totally different way, certainly a great debut, I can’t wait for Sleep Terror’s next album.
