"From the discarded remains of the Idiot’s Flesh has risen…."

Album; In Glorious Times
Artist: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
Year: 2007
Genre: Avant-Chamber Metal/Progressive Metal
Label: The End

The Sleepytime Gorilla Museum are easily as baffling as their name would imply, and their albums are forays into previously unexplored regions of the human and in-human condition. The band rose from the remains of Idiot Flesh and Charming Hostess to become a new entity. In Glorious Times is their third release, following 2004’s Of Natural History. The band’s sound has changed little since then, but they have certainly found more things to do with that sound. How do I describe it…At one moment you could be watching the greatest opera on earth, a moving tale of tragedy and woe (nothing good ever happens in opera) and then you realize, it is nothing more than a farce, the presumed tragedy isn’t even real, everything is backwards and 1=0. As you continue to watch and listen, your understanding of the line between seriousness and farce grows ever more blurred until the blithering maniacs proclaiming they are made of a thousand tiny countries seem as sane and coherent as you did before you entered the theater. S.G.M. is a bunch of lunatics, sure, but they are geniuses also.

Many of their instruments were developed by their bass player Dan Rathbun. Some of these notable inventions include the “piano log,” the “percussion guitar” and “The Vatican” (a drum set made of found objects and regular pieces.) In Glorious Times, the formula has been well established by previous efforts, so why not tweak it some more by a move from Web of Mimicry Records to The End (a label which specializes in Avant-Metal and more.) The album’s songs are magnificent in size and execution, the opening track “The Companions” being 10 minutes to begin with. In the song, Nils Frykdahl (the bands Guitar player) details the coming of “the lonely people” who he seems greatly threatened by. Lyrics of this group are often stories of fantastical happenings and places, with some kind of pseudo-philosophy driving the whole thing. Frykdahl's vocals are guttural and sound like a wolf tearing at the flesh of a deer, while violinist Carla Kihlstedt’s have greater range as she can go from a lilting whisper to a brutal cry of agony in a split second. The playing of the band at this point has reach a multi-layered cohesion so perfect that they could be sharing thoughts, especially on tracks like “Angle of Repose,” a tale of a woman whose body is made up of tiny countries, and “Helpless Corpses Enactment,” mad scientists ramblings on life and death given musical form.

This album is spooky; make no mistake, perfect for a drive through some dark landscape of desolation and waste. To make it even more so, the band has added recorded messages that sound like they could have been taken directly from a mental institution for hopeless psychotics. As the album continues, the feeling of dread increases to unbearable levels, but that’s all part of the fun. Listening to this, you can’t help but feel as though you are witnessing something incredible. Something that history will recognize and keep forever. At least, until it’s destroyed in a great fire… for that is the nature of the Museum, to be consumed by time, both preserved and destroyed at the same time.