Review Summary: A wholly original album that mixes Mathcore and Shoegaze effortlessly.
Exotic Animal Petting Zoo are among some of the more unique bands out there with their seamless blend of mathcore, shoegaze, and post-hardcore. As they only have two albums in their discography, they both take different approaches to their established sound. Their debut, while still filled with the typical technical mathcore riffs, is much more focused on the atmosphere. However,
Tree of Tongues shortens the songs in order to focus on the odd, intense riffs and powerful melodic passages amongst the chaos.
The majority of the tracklist features fierce and energetic riffs paired with raw screams that will then crescendo into a melody with either emotive cleans or screams.
Thorough.Modern provides the best example of this ‘template’ due to its particularly memorable finale. Halfway through, the track breaks down into more shoegaze elements to provide a dynamic build up.
You Make Wonderful Pictures also follows a similar style but instead offers an extremely solid guitar solo after a section of catchy yet powerful cleans.
However, some tracks do go in a more mathcore direction.
The Great Explainer first forty seconds contain some of the most creative, groovy, and intense riffs of the whole album without getting too technical. The rest of the song follows suit with the fierce instrumentation apart from a short yet sweet melodic section. By far the most chaotic and brutal cut off the album is
Whores of Babel. The riffs are at their heaviest, and the vocals are at their most visceral. The song's exceptional climax starts with dissonant guitar chords and a kick drum that transition into a noisy, albeit groove-filled, riff.
Trees of Tongues is definitely at it’s strongest when the tracks are heavily mathcore and post-hardcore influenced rather than shoegaze. While
M.U.M.B. and
Gypsy Among the Pines are more breathers among the intensity than fully fledged songs, the interludes do contain some solid dreamy melodies, especially the former, but they lack any payoff to excuse the interludes' relatively long runtime, as they do go on for a bit too long and could be cut down. However, the shoegaze elements of the band's sound are definitely not an overall weakness, as there are multiple strong, reverb-filled moments to be found here. A good chunk of the tracks contain a section with calming guitar melodies that undeniably increase the impact of climatic moments. After the first half of
Apis Bull, the track fully commits to the shoegaze influences, which results in some of the strongest melodic passages of the album.
Overall,
Tree of Tongues manages to live up to the quality of their debut while holding its own separate take on the band's unique sound. The mathcore elements never fail to be intense and energetic due to the powerful vocal performance and the seemingly never-ending creativity of the guitar work. Whenever the band takes influences from shoegaze, it is generally great as it adds to the chaotic and unpredictable style and some compelling melodies, but it can slow the album down too much on the occasional moment. Despite this, it is a standout album amongst the mathcore genre, and it was the perfect way to end their unfortunately short career.
