Vektor

Ahh, how refreshing. They described themselves as progressive thrash metal with sci-fi lyrics, and they ARE progressive thrash metal with sci-fi lyrics. Even if they weren’t good, I’d appreciate that. Vektor began in 2002 in Tempe, Arizona. To check them out, I picked up the latest album, “Black Future”.

I was talking to this nice dude the other day who happened to grow up in Chilliwack, this town I lived in for a disastrous year in 2008. I met a lot of morons during my brief stay so I was especially happy to meet a nice, smart metalhead who lived there. When he recommended Vektor, I put it on the top of my list. These guys have been around for 8 years and have 2 full-lengths, so the fact that I haven’t heard of them should tip you off as to how little musical discovery I’ve done in the past few years.

The album is pretty badass, but it isn’t perfect. They nail all the things you need to be thrash and progressive, lots of speed, skillful drums, some weird time signatures, etc. I think the fault is in the songwriting. Although after listening to the album, I looked up some reviews, and most of them said “superb” or “brilliant” songwriting. Hmm.

Sometimes it gets pretty boring and they seem to switch between interesting, original sounding riffs to familiar old simple riffs, depending on the song. Maybe boring is the wrong word, since they have a ton of talent. I don’t think I’m allowed to call bands boring who play guitar faster than I can think, am I? I’ve never been in a speed metal band, maybe you need some easy interludes to cool down your fingertips? Has too much ridiculous Yngwie Malmsteen as a child made me jaded?

At any rate, I think the awesome riffs and technical work far outweigh the less exciting stuff. The weakest part of the album is the middle, especially after the really interesting “Destroying the Cosmos”. The last two songs are pretty epic and probably the most progressive and awesome on the album.

The vocals aren’t as easy to understand the lyrics than a lot of the bigger thrash bands, but the voice itself doesn’t harm the music at all. So many times I’ll start checking out a song and it’ll start off really strong and then these awful disruptive vocals will come in and ruin it. The vocals here are good and fit the tone of the album. I want to check out the first album to see how it differs but I don’t wanna pirate it, and it’s not available for free anywhere official. So that’ll have to wait for a bit.

The album reminded me a LOT of late Death, although the vocals don’t get as high pitched. After I listened to it, I went back and listened to The Sound of Perseverance album , sighed heavily and wished that Death was still around.

I did a bit of Googling (sadly, they took down the playable Pac-man game from the front page) to see if I could find out anything notable and besides rave reviews for Black Future (which made me feel kinda bad for writing even a slightly ill word about it!), there isn’t much to find. I did find an interview that had an extremely cheesy and, to me, hilarious explanation of how the band was formed, though.

Vektor emerged from a subspatial realm after the fabric of space was ripped apart by the destructive actions of humans in the year 2483. We traveled back in time to melt people’s brains into a soupy paste with our music, thus redirecting the flow of time and the fate of the universe. Our primordial bodies were sent to an arid region of the U.S. at Earth’s latitude 34.23 and longitude 111.33 (Phoenix, Arizona) in the year 2003. We didn’t recognize each other in our human forms so it took a while to find each other and complete the lineup.

The nerd is strong in them; I approve.

Vektor on Myspace
Vektor on Metal-Archives