Review by Shadowdoom9 (Andi) for Alchemist - Jar of Kingdom (1993)

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"