Myotonia

Myotonia (2007)

Sloane Daley

Some bands may try to scare you with macabre lyrics and skulls and bones and boners and all sorts of ballyhoo, but rarely do they succeed. The folks in Myotonia take a different, more psychological approach when attempting to leave more than streaks in your undies. Their name is taken from a symptom of certain neuromuscular disorders and for artwork the band has chosen the blown up picture of some microbial beast. The music accompanying these horrors is heavy and technical hardcore with comparisons that can be made to Botch or Ion Dissonance, sort of.

The album starts off rather inauspiciously with "Total Protonic Reversal," which is technically impressive but overall not that memorable. That is sort of the element that plagues the majority of this release. However, once in a while the band is able to throw something out there that really rips and "Got Cat" is a great example of that. The song starts off with nicely juxtaposed melodic and droning parts in the intro before it delves into its changing rhythms and abstract lyrics, and even breaks off into passages of jazzy noodling. I'm not sure if the song is meant be ironic in some because the final word in it is "MUSTACHE." The pure speed found in the tune "Art of an Exit" doesn't really come up again in the album; not to say the songs aren't fast, but I sort of wish they'd really let loose like that more often, but with only eight songs I guess there isn't as much room to explore. Speaking of exploration, the slightly melodic playing on a few of the songs leads me to believe the band could really play up the dynamic between those elements and their more metallic assaults.

Although the lyrics seem sort of ridiculous and the tone of the guitars is just kind of middle of the road and not quite as heavy as I think the band's overall sound might suggest, Myotonia have served up a relatively satisfying recording. Now time for me to go take a shower to scare off the microbial beasts.