Alchemist - Jar of Kingdom (1993)^{Release ID: 7867}

Being a local gives any self-respecting metalhead some additional rights within their homeland as it affords you the privilege of being in the know about a number of artists that offer a high-quality product but, for one reason or another, have failed to break out of the confines of their international borders. Canberra four-piece Alchemist fit that bill very nicely for us Aussies & I think you'd be surprised as to how big a role they ended up playing in the childhood of both of your Metal Academy administrators. Ben & I came across Alchemist very early on in their recording career when we picked up their 1993 "Jar of Kingdom" CD from the local record store. We were both under-age at the time so didn't have much of an understanding of who Alchemist were at that point but, over the next 3-4 years, that situation would drastically change with the boys playing an increasingly more significant role in our lives. I'd pickup Alchemist's 1991 "Demo '91" demo tape directly through the band shortly afterwards but it wouldn't make anything like the sort of impact that Alchemist's next couple of albums did & I look back on both of those with great fondness & nostalgia now. I'd also see Alchemist play live on countless occasions during the mid-1990's as they were a regular visitor to our hometown of Sydney which is less than a three-hour drive from Australia's capital city, not to mention their involvement in both organizing & performing at the legendary annual Canberra metal festival Metal For The Brain which was very much a right of passage for Aussie metalheads. Alchemist were an amazing experience in a live environment too, particularly when you've just dropped a tab of LSD as I had on one memorable occasion in Newtown. That's a story for another time though as we're really here to talk about Alchemist's debut album "Jar of Kingdom" which is still a very interesting listen all these years later.

Alchemist were formed by band leader Adam Agius (The Levitation Hex) back in 1987 & had begun life as a tech thrash band with their first two demo tapes "Eternal Wedlock" & "Demo '90" sitting predominantly in that space. I recently revisited their third demo tape "Demo '91" though & found Alchemist to be in a transitional phase that saw them sitting halfway between a Voivod-ish tech thrash model & a far more experimental & creative avant-garde/psychedelic sound. Did it work? Weeellll.... not quite. It was far more interesting than it was enjoyable. Alchemist's debut album would see the promise of that demos A side coming to fruition though with the band having had the time to complete their transition into a fully-fledged avant-garde death metal band. Agius was the only original member remaining by this stage & he'd recruited a very talented trio of accomplices to assist him in the creation of some of the most bizarre metal music the world (& certainly a seventeen year-old me) had ever heard to the time.

"Jar of Kingdom" sports a very unusual production job that can initially be a little off-putting. The bass & rhythm guitars possess a strangely bassed-out tone with very little in the way of high-end & it sees them being somewhat lost in the background. This affords the psychedelics that are layered over the top the opportunity to play the role of the sole instrumental protagonist. You can still make out all of the riffs but one feels that the album could have been a touch more effective if those riffs were given a little more scope. In saying that though, I can't deny that this flaw only amplifies the things that make Alchemist truly unique i.e. their strange, quirky & downright bizarre psychedelic melodics. It also gives Adam more room to move as a frontman with his vocals now being presented as a rabid, unintelligible death metal bark. He never takes himself too seriously though so the listener rarely finds themselves with that classic extreme metal scowl on their face as this music is simply too fun for that.

The tracklisting on "Jar of Kingdom" is very consistent & was clearly the result of the lengthy six-year engagement period & extensive live experience. It opens with my favourite inclusion in "Abstraction" which showcases Alchemist's new sound in all its glory. My other clear favourite is the short & atmospheric "Found" which features guest female vocals from Adam's family friend Michelle Klemke. The other eight tracks are universally rewarding but rarely overcome the fact that I simply can't ever genuinely "love" a record that's this silly. The re-recorded version of my favourite song from "Demo '91" in "Enhancing Enigma" was most welcome while there are number of others that would soon become live favourites for me & my friends. I'd imagine that it would be quite hard for those that have never had the pleasure of witnessing an Alchemist show to imagine this material being presented in a faithful format in a live environment but I can assure you that the band sounded almost exactly like this live, if not better.

Look... I'm not going to sit here & tell you that "Jar of Kingdom" is essential listening & it doesn't come close to touching Alchemist's next couple of records either but it was an important record in the annuls of Aussie metal history nonetheless & I think it has something to offer, particularly for those members of The Infinite who are gifted with a more eclectic taste profile. I mean, I'd argue that if you haven't heard Alchemist then you're completely in the dark about some of the places that metal music can go as they created arguably the most psychedelic example of metal music you'll ever encounter. Imagine a combination of the silly avant-garde experimentation of Mr. Bungle & the weird-ass death metal of Phlebotomized or Pan.Thy.Monium & you won't be far off the mark. Perhaps you think that there are musical borders that simply can't be broken through? Well, Alchemist emphatically piss on that idea with their debut album & they should be given credit for that if nothing else.

I haven't heard of this band from Canberra, Australia before, but let me fill you in right away on what to expect from Alchemist's debut Jar of Kingdom. This is avant-garde/progressive death metal soaring through the psychedelic cosmos! This is the kind of style that's either awesome or too weird to enjoy. In this case, it's the former. Alchemist made an experiment in metal alchemy that has really paid off!

With this incredible debut, I have a great feeling about the rest of their discography. There are so many things that are both expected and unexpected all in one dish. Avant-garde/prog-metal has lots of twists through death and doom here. For newcomers to The Infinite genres, it may sound weird and take some time to digest.

Listeners of the album get the first taste of the experience from opening track "Abstraction", starting with a smooth yet eerie horror movie-ish intro before blasting off into atonal guitars and death growls, to remind some of Demilich without going all-out brutal. Frontman Adam Agius actually damaged his voice while recording that song, hence the rawness of his vocals here. "Shell" is a bizarre when kicking off with twisted ethereal doom, but then we have some fast bass melody and heaviness to stand out. "Purple" is more dynamic in the blast-beats and riffing, blending the psychedelia of Voivod at the time with the deathly hellfire. The cacophonic title track once again has 70s space rock twisted into intricate thrashy death metal rhythms.

"Wandering and Wondering" wanders through dissonant riffing reminiscent of Carbonized and melodic turns into doom/power metal. Then we have an acoustic interlude "Found" sung by Michelle Klemke. "Enhancing Enigma" enhances the sound with oriental psychedelia as the death metal realms continue to range from thrashy to doomy.

"Whale" is a strange interlude with the wailing of a humpback whale in the background, long before Gojira tried something like that in From Mars to Sirius. And there's more experimentation in "Brumal: a View from Pluto" in which deathly blasts have a bit of industrial melody crawling in. It all leads to "Worlds Within Worlds" having some of that Eastern balladry followed by the last bit of thrashy death metal in a progressive epic.

Jar of Kingdom is the massive beginning of a 6-album journey that sadly had to end. Adam Agius would then form a new band, The Levitation Hex, with members of Alarum. Nonetheless, the complex experimentation of Alchemist is a deathly adventure through the dark psychedelic depths of space!

Favorites: "Abstraction", "Purple", "Jar of Kingdom", "Enhancing Enigma", "Worlds Within Worlds"