What's He Building In There? - s/t
(Year of the Sun 2007, YOTS 30252)
What's He Building In There? - s/t
(Year of the Sun 2007, YOTS 30252)
From Aural Innovations #38 (January 2008)
What's He Building In There? (WHBIT) are from Waterloo, Ontario and their name comes from a Tom Waits song. But the name is the only thing that can be compared to Tom Waits. The music is a mixture of progressive and technical metal and the contemporary metal bands that use the growling guttural vocal style that's so popular these days. I can't even give analogies because I don't keep up with the stuff. In any event, WHBIT are fast, furious and aggressive, but this is no mere slam bang bone crushing affair. The musicianship is top notch, and compositionally these guys are all over the place. Rhythms, phrasings, you name it, seem to shift every few seconds. But rather than being an abrupt, choppy affair, it comes off beautifully seamless and fluid. And WHBIT utilize instrumentation not normally heard with this kind of metal, like piano and horns. They're in no way prominent, but crop up occasionally to add a little offbeat character to the music. I even heard synth and keyboard bits on a few songs. I played this for a guy at work who is completely in tune with all the current metal bands and he said WHBIT are taking the music in a different direction than most of the bands he listens to, which I took to be a good sign. I suspect these guys are a bunch of prog and jazz fans who decided to form a metal band. WHBIT are to metal what Zappa was to rock.
For more information you can visit the What's He Building In There? web site at: http://www.whbit.com.
Hear music at their Myspace site at: http://www.myspace.com/whbit.
Visit the Year of the Sun web site at: http://yearofthesun.com.
Reviewed by Jerry Kranitz