Djent: The new way to make progressive metal
The djent is a variation of the progressive metal, with a particular sound, endowed with a lot of technique, polyrhythm (the use of conflicting rhythms as in a crossed rhythm) and quite irregular rhythms that can shock the listener, often caused by the dissonances used on guitars, the drums can use a 4/4 tempo while the guitars one of 3/4 and vice versa, making this a fairly mathematical sound, with quite complex musical textures.
It is presumed that the term djent was used for the first time by Frederik Thordental, the lead guitarist of the crushing Swedish metal band Meshugga, who began by mixing groove and thrash metal until they refined their characteristic sound by the use of palm muting with bass tones and drums with very fast breakdowns.
However, the genre was defined and became popular thanks to the Periphery guitarist Misha Mansoor and to a community of enthusiastic musicians about the experimentation and the musical technique, who making progressive metal decided to move away from the traditional structures of the aforementioned genre and to adapt the math-metal or mathematical metal to the progressive, creating in this way a wave of bands attached to this new way of making music.
Today we can find interesting mixes that provide a fresh sound; from djent with rap, as the band Hacktivist demonstrates, up to a rather dark sound like that one from the Swedish band Vildhjarta. This genre, thanks to the constant experimentation provided by its musicians, has brought to us bands that despite being associated with this sound, we can say that they are quite different from each other, some of them can use exquisite harmonies, while others abuse the low tones to give a greater rawness to the sound but not without technique.
Among my favorite exponents of this genre, I can include the following bands:
Animal as Leaders: Formed in 2007 in Washington D.C, United States, by the recognized guitarist, Tosin Abasi, is one of my favorite bands, not only from the djent scene but from music in general. Within this band we can find harmonic chords, accompanied by ultra-low tunes and a spectacular drum that makes use of techniques even used in jazz.
The band since its debut album, has been acclaimed by the critics and every time it is noticed a bigger evolution in the music they develop, album after album; at the moment, with 4 studio albums: Animal as leaders, Weightless, The Joy Motion and The Madness of Many, this last one taking a slightly darker turn in some of its songs, but said by the band's guitarist, Javier Reyes, this has been their most complicated and progressive work.
We are in constant innovation and evolutionary mentality, always trying to move towards new horizons, it is hard, but at the same time it is something risky wonderful in the creative process. Javier Reyes for www.irock.cl
In response to how he defined his own music, Tosin Abasi says that it is instrumental music based on the guitar with jazz harmonies and some electronic elements.
Without a doubt, if you are a person who likes music at a technical level, you cannot stop listening to this band, in fact I remember the first time I heard CAFO (song from its self-titled album) that completely exceeded my expectations and that is precisely what Animal as Leaders does, exceed the expectations of their listeners in each album.
Periphery: Formed in 2005 online, thanks to his guitarist Misha Mansoor, in Beteshda, Maryland; it could be said that thanks to this project that is now a band, the sound of the djent emerged and consolidated. In Periphery we come across a very modern metal, progressive and with the use of quite technical guitars; however, unlike Animal as Leaders, this band has a vocalist that uses both clean voices and screams, typical of metalcore.
This band also stands out for the clean and high quality of their recordings, giving to them an impressive level of neatness; the music is mathematical, exact, without errors, composing complex structures that quickly hook the listener; and this I don’t think is easy to achieve, apart from being able to adapt to the digital era where the "mainstream" of the metal is losing validity and the bands must record on their own, and this is what the people of Periphery are doing very well.
Tesseract: Coming from Milton Keynes, England and formed in 2003, they bring us a more harmonic proposal (despite the constant use of the "djent" sound) through their clean vocals, creating a sound with a dense and emotional atmosphere. The bass is perhaps the most outstanding instrument in this band and who is in charge of it, Amos Williams, is also the producer and responsible for mastering and mixing the band's albums since he is an audio engineer.
Like many bands of the djent scene, Tesseract owes a lot of its success to digital platforms, since in a large part its music has been distributed in this way, as in the case of Periphery, making a kind of community of online musicians.
Like any emergent genre, this one has its detractors, some of them coming from the hardcore scene, who use the term djent as something pejorative, claiming that it is not really a genre but rather a passing trend. In my opinion I think that this sound is a clear evolution of progressive metal which started with bands like Pink Floyd and going through Dreamtheater. Its sound is much more modern and frequently endowed with neat recordings, making complex compositions with great harmony and loading this genre with an amazing technique that often gives room to think about mathematics.
The recurring themes in the lyrics of these bands are science, science fiction and philosophy, making the intellectual load of these bands get strengthened with the lyrics since in itself, its sound is complex. I must clarify that there are some bands that perform a very repetitive and tedious type of djent; but to leave an entrance, between the bands that in my opinion are worth listening and are associated with this sound, we have: Vitalism, Born of Osiris, Vildhjarta, Textures, Hacktivist, After the Burial and Veil Of Maya, each of them with its characteristic sound and different from each other, this without counting the three bands already mentioned above.
There are more and more musicians who want to be associated to the djent, without being completely inside the genre, as is the case of Angel Vivaldi, a virtuous guitarist who often uses certain techniques of this particular sound. We can also find a big number of online musicians who show their compositions through Youtube, without belonging to any specific band, only making use of low tunes with palm muting and ultimately a heavy but technical sound as it is this great genre.
Pictures Sources
1 Keep Calm and listen to Djent
2 Animal as Leaders Band
3 Periphery's Picture
4 Misha Mansoor in his Home Studio
5 Tesseract's Picture
I LOVE Djent, and I love Animals As Leaders. Amazing post! I really enjoyed reading it and learning a little bit more about this fascinating musical genre! Already followed you, kruznik ;)
Definitely is the best musical proposal in the current panorama, obviously under my opinion. I'm glad you liked this post, I'll try to make more often musical post about my favorite genres and bands. Thanks so much for the support.
Now you have all my attention.
Thanks dude, Tesseract's bass is amazing, you should pay attention to them and I also recommend you Animal as Leaders, the whole band is incredible.
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Djent is the refreshment the metal genre needed, dynamic, technical and fucking amazing! You're review on the whole sub-genre as on point and really cool written it was a trully pleasure to find this, felicitaciones mi pana!
Curie Curator
That's what we needed and the refreshment is not only thanks to this genre but also thanks to avantgarde-metal bands that they are expanding new horizons as far musical level concerned. I'm very grateful you liked this post. Gracias bro.