Those familiar with Mueller as a purveyor of extended technique will be surprised by the forcefulness on Metals, which finds its protagonist engaging in salvos of blast beats and propulsive rhythmic action. But while it’s the heavy stuff that will likely garner the most attention, Mueller’s focus isn’t solely on the visceral muscle of the disc’s most pummeling fare. Textures plays a large part in the fabric, with insistent percussion layered under washes of cymbals or packaged as merely one facet of the overall density of sound. Mueller also tends carefully to the album’s use of crescendo and dynamic interplay, with “Trace Essential” and its build from slow, steady, ominous beats into a tight locomotive chug perhaps the best example. Swirling clouds of cymbal and simple electronic tones act as counterpoint to the tumult, but appear too infrequently (and, sometimes, too low in the mix) to effectively offset Mueller’s heavy-metal machinations – Adam Strohm
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