Reviews list for Atheist - Unquestionable Presence (1991)

I blame Atheist for giving me such high expectations for tech death metal. While there are many good tech death bands, few can match what this album accomplishes; and none can match the elegant simplicity of the intro to Mother Man. In ten seconds we get the bass leading, then a surprisingly simple guitar riff, and finally the focus is on the drums. Each part in harmony, creating a whole that is much more than it seems. It's rare an album that can show exactly how well it works in it's opening notes.
It's not that there isn't anywhere else for the genre to go after hearing this album, it's just that it's hard for anyone to come up with something that doesn't sound worse. Each factor that goes into making a song good, does here. A perfect blend of aggression, technicality and melody. And unlike a lot of guitar solos where it comes down to a case of technicality or artistry, this never comes up here. If I had to complain, I'd say that even after years of extreme metal and having the lyrics, it can be hard to decipher the vocals.
I really don't have much critical thought on this one simply because it was almost everything I wanted out of tech death. What more did I want? Elements.

As I have iterated before on many occasions, I am not a fan of technical death metal (or tech-thrash either for that matter) but my experiences with Atheist have been nothing but incredibly positive. The reason for this, I think, is that these guys don't make the technicalities of their music the be all and end all, but rather they make the jazz elements and their technical expertise work to enhance the high quality death metal that they produce. I mean, these guys produce absolute killer riffs, some of which still contain a deal of thrashiness, such as the main riff on the title track, or on The Formative Years, and that is what I want to hear when I listen to a death metal album - riffs, riffs and more riffs... oh and a certain degree of brutality, another aspect of their sound that is well and truly taken care of. So with that aspect of their songwriting sorted they then give themselves license to enhance and elaborate upon their ideas with jazz-influenced sections, multifarious time changes and displays of technical skill a great deal of their contemporaries could only marvel at, I suspect.

The drumming and basswork are superb and sound fantastic, Tony Choy's bass playing in particular is impressive as he weaves his basslines in and out of the sound, at times in step with drummer Steve Flynn like conjoined twins, such as during the technical sections of An Incarnation's Dream where the two combine to weave musical magic. Kelly Shaefer has a pretty mean death growl, not so deep and rumbling as some, but with a nice vicious snarl to it. Shaefer and Rand Burkey also turn in some mean solos that howl and squeal nicely but, man, I just can't get over them riffs.

At a mere 33 minutes this may appear to be quite a slight album, but Atheist just pack so much into it that it is more than enough to sate the appetite. In fact I would argue that knowing when to stop is also a lost art amongst too many modern metal acts who insist on issuing bloated hour-plus efforts that can oftimes test the patience and I, for one, would much rather have half an hour of this level of quality. So, first and foremost, Unquestionable Presence is a top-drawer death metal album with enough brutal-sounding riffs to stop a charging rhino, but Atheist held ambition enough not to be satisfied with "just" that, they further employed their technical prowess and songwriting skill to push the boundaries of what death metal could be and can justifiably be considered one of the seminal bands (along with Chuck Schuldiner's Death) of the technical death movement. I'm just not sure if the later acolytes of Atheist always concentrated on writing brilliant death metal songs first and foremost like the massively impressive Floridians did, so for me, this is one of the absolute premier tech-death albums and, despite my reticence regarding tech-death generally, I could listen to this all day long.

Atheist is a special band to appear in the early 90s. Together with Cynic, they shook the harsh death metal world by jazzing it up with jazz elements. And what an amazing perfect product this band has created!

Atheist had their own unique writing going on. Bassist Roger Patterson wrote the bass lines for the guitars to be structured upon for a different unconventional interplay. Sadly, he's gone, after a vehicular accident. RIP... Helping out the band is the massive delivery of Tony Choy. We also have the mighty guitar skills of Rand Burkey and Kelly Shaefer, the latter providing clean yet aggressive vocals reminiscent of the later Death albums. And who would forget Steve Flynn's perfectly pattern-less drumming variety?

"Mother Man" is an impressive starting point to hear all that drumming talent. Aside from the percussion, jazzy bass kicks off the action before loading up a lot of metal riffing fury in their arsenal. The title track is the best here, that's how awesome this album is! The rhythmic twists will blow your mind.

"Your Life's Retribution" has the technicality that Death would have in Human, in a more memorable light. The intro to "Enthralled in Essence" might throw some listeners off-guard, but what matters is the epic melody and desperate speed to immediately put you back on track. Another amazing highlight is "An Incarnation's Dream", starting with a serene acoustic intro before more complex heaviness.

"The Formative Years" unleashes more of the technicality without being too excessive, rather just naturally playing out their elements naturally, for the catchiness this album needs. More occasions for the sound to shine occur in "Brains". Kelly Shaefer is the brains behind the melody, shredding fierce leads and performing comprehensible growls, sounding the most excellent there. The closing "And the Psychic Saw" is the heaviest way to end the record. After all that jazz from earlier on in the album, it was time to end with the thrashy tech-death from their debut.

This band has clearly established the jazzy progressive tech-death that was first hinted in Piece of Time and fully formed in Unquestionable Presence. One of the most influential classics in the progressive/death metal realms!

Favorites: "Mother Man", "Unquestionable Presence", "Enthralled in Essence", "An Incarnation's Dream", "Brains"

As far as pushing progressive themes like technicality, odd-time signatures, and intensely difficult musicianship, Atheist pretty much took the crown when they dropped Unquestionable Presence. They took elements from Watchtower in general and Death’s most technical moments and shot it all up to 11. Every song is one of those multi-movement marvels where so much is going on and it changes so often that your mind is constantly struggling to grasp it. People say there’s a Jazz influence here – maybe, but I don’t think that was intentional. Atheist never stray into chaotic or improvisation territory, as everything is so exact it’s almost the antithesis to Jazz.

The mind-boggling music of the album does have a weakness though. Personally, I prefer Atheist’s debut, Piece of Time, for one simple reason; it was riff-focused. It still had a ton of extremely technical work, but first and foremost they had awesome and memorable riffs. Unquestionable Presence, for all it’s power and might, fails to grab me with any significant moments. Over 20 listens on and I still couldn’t tell you one song from another. At least this complexity assures the album will always be enjoyable front to back, never in danger of burning itself out.

Occasionally, when I'm sitting at my desk at work (and wanting to do anything but work), I'll just zone out for a bit towards the end of a long day. My mind will drift beyond the office walls and debate itself back and forth on some of life's great questions:

What role should the state play in regulating the Wild West of ideas that is the internet? How did ancient celtic pagans coordinate the building of Stonehenge before writing even existed? Is my girlfriend the one I want to spend my life with? Is Piece of Time or Unquestionable Presence the better Atheist album? Hmmm.

It was the last of these eternal debates that occupied my mind this afternoon. You see, the debut was one of my favorite death metal albums in The Formative Years (wink wink) of my metal discovery. Even having had listened to a little Death and maybe Cynic by that time, I had never heard riffs like those. Songs like the title track still hit me with the ferocity they did when I was 14. But then there's this album. By the time I finally got around to Atheist's sophomore effort, several years later, it had a much harder task than its predecessor in terms of impressing me. I was much more of a seasoned (and perhaps jaded) metalhead. I was on insanely technical stuff like Necrophagist and Obscura by that point. Even still, I immediately realized that Unquestionable Presence was superior from a musical and technical performance perspective. These songs took a ridiculous amount of Brains (heh) to compose, let alone play. To this day, I would cite this as THE best example of Jazz Fusion being effectively woven into a metal template. I mean, already on the opening track, you have that jazzy bass transition out of nowhere. Dear Lucifer.

That said, this album took me much longer than the debut to actually love as a listening experience. It was clear that Atheist were trying to take the musical ingredients that gave Piece of Time a unique flavor amongst the death metal horde and amplify them to the nth degree. But ludicrous bass pops, sudden time changes, sophisticated jazz-influenced drumming, and wicked solos don't automatically make for better music. My initial opinion was that, in elevating their prog leanings and technicality, Atheist lost touch with what made great metal songs.

Fortunately... I was wrong! It's true that Unquestionable Presence lacks the youthful aggression of Piece of Time, with less of those thrash and tremolo riffs, but there are plenty of other death metal albums in that vein. There's only one Unquestionable Presence. What's the difference? Well, like many other Extreme Metal albums recognized as masterpieces, what makes this album special is the band's ability to fit genuinely memorable songwriting (dare I say catchiness) into their particular brand of brutality/technicality in a natural way. Atheist's particular brand, of course, revolves around being able to play with mind-bending musicality that most bands simply can't, and this complexity initially obfuscated the effectiveness of the songs to my ears. But when you pull it back, after multiple listens to digest, you start hearing that songs like "The Formative Years", "Unquestionable Presence", and "And the Psychic Saw" have the bones to be great, kickass metal songs even without the extra bells and whistles. I personally know the title track has gotten stuck in my head many times. "Enthralled In Essence", my favorite on the album, deserves extra-special recognition. It physically transports me to those planets on the album cover, accomplishing the rare feat of inducing a certain feeling in me as a listener that is completely unique, unable to be replicated by any other song. The first solo entrance is beautiful and that climax part that enters at 2:56 is downright alien and otherworldly. Enthralled in the essence, indeed! Not every single song manages to be quite as great as some of the ones I've mentioned, which is why this is a Strong 8 instead of a 9 or 10. But there certainly aren't any songs I would consider "weak" and the high points are true landmarks in the history of metal.

...So which do I like better, Piece of Time or Unquestionable Presence? The debut has such a deep place in my heart that I will never be able to proclaim otherwise for sure, but Unquestionable Presence is the album that I find myself coming back to much more often nowadays. All I know for certain is that I'm thankful that I gave it the time build an Unquestionable Presence (grooaaan) in my head. Because once you've digested all the twists and turns in these compositions, this album is so much fun to listen to.

Atheist's Unquestionable Presence is a perfect example of what a death metal band made up of insanely talented musicians can achieve if they let their creativity and open mindedness reign supreme. This album has almost not constraints and it's for this reason that it manages to be so incredibly captivating for its admittedly short running time. One of the most impressive things about the album is that it somehow avoids coming across as pretentious. With all the variation in style and masterful musicianship throughout, Atheist were in real danger of pushing the boundaries of decency. But these guys obviously knew exactly what they were doing, placing awesome heavy death riffs between all the fretboard wankery, bizarre time changes and jazz fusion.

Steve Flynn's drumming is out of this world! Tony Choy is one of the very best bass players I've ever heard and considering he also played on Cynic's Focus and Pestilence's Testimony of the Ancients, is a total legend of the scene. But it's Rand Burkey and Kelly Shaeffer that steal the show. The constant flow of jaw dropping riffs and leads is simply astounding. Atheist have recently reformed for a reunion tour, but I must wonder whether they can pull it off considering Burkey is unavailable and Schaeffer was forced to give up playing guitar live due to tendonitis and carpal tunnel. Whoever takes over has seriously big shoes to fill. Highlights for me are Mother Man, Unquestionable Presence, Your Life's Retribution and An Incarnation's Dream. This album deserves its place among the elite of extreme metal!