The third album by Chicago art-metal quartet
Yakuza features a number of guests, including
Minsk bassist (and highly regarded producer)
Sanford Parker, pianist Jim Baker, cellist
Fred Lonberg-Holm, and
Mastodon guitarist
Troy Sanders. The production by
Matt Bayles, who's also worked with
Isis and
Botch, takes them into a more psychedelic direction than their previous release, 2002's thrashy
Way of the Dead. "Monkeytail" is built around a dubby, post-punk groove atop which vocalist
Bruce Lamont plays echoey, effected saxophone lines. At the song's midpoint, a screeching guitar riff reminiscent of Texas thrashers
Rigor Mortis comes in, taking the track in a new and much more aggressive direction. This balance between highly technical thrash and drifting, doped-out soundscapes has few antecedents in modern metal, unless you're going to count
John Zorn's Painkiller. Other tracks, like "Dishonor" and the crushingly heavy "Just Say Know," stay brutal all the way through.
Yakuza's interest in organic changes rather than inhumanly precise juxtapositions puts them at odds with the metal audience, but it makes
Samsara more interesting than the works of more showily "progressive" acts like
Between the Buried and Me.