Ahleuchatistas - "Even in the Midst..."

Ahleuchatistas - ...Of All This (Cuneiform 2007)

Ahleuchatistas - Even in the Midst... / Cuneiform

Another chance meeting at the legendary Immaginarium opened my eyes to Asheville, NC's Ahleuchatistas three years ago. The way you know a house show is going to be good is when several mattresses are necessary to cover the walls so the neighbors don't hear the racket going on inside. Such was the case with this three-piece, who have what must only be described as one of the best names in all of music (derived from the Charlie Parker song "Ah-Leu-Cha" and Mexico's infamous hillside guerrillas, the Zapatistas). I wasn't sure what to expect other than a lot of loudness, but my ears were given the special blessing of a particularly vicious show that evening; if I remember correctly, underground offspring Ampere were also in attendance.

The point of yet another memory-as-set-up is that Ahleuchatistas are a very special band in the sense that their music sticks with you. It is a sick combination of jazz, punk, maybe a little metal, and homegrown political protest folk in the best traditions of Asheville's hippie cauldron way up there in the Appalachians somewhere off I-40. Other artists may be taking the same spirit with them when they create their own music, but nobody sounds quite like Ahleuchatistas.

Here's how it works: They play. You shut up and listen. In the case of Even in the Midst..., this group is at its strongest. Of course, everybody likes to say that anytime something new comes out (except for In Rainbows, of course), it's their best yet. But I think that, having listened to them long enough and enjoyed them beyond a blistering SXSW set, this in fact is their smartest and most vindictive record yet. You don't come out of it feeling like you've accomplished something other than the fact that you survived. That's how hard they kick your ass.

It's not just the constant pulsing of the drums on tracks like "Cup of Substance" or the unhinged chaos of "Elegant Proof." We all know these guys are competent with their instruments. It's one of the reasons so many people have grouped them into that increasingly outmoded subgenre we hesitantly call "math-rock," after all. Just as Battles laughed in its face earlier this year with Mirrored, so too do Ahleuchatistas... Except this is a different kind of laugh. Battles laughed heartily and then smiled as they flipped the script; Ahleuchatistas have a vulpine menace that suggests they'll sink their teeth into you if you don't take them seriously.

And they don't always have to melt your mind with brain-bending time signature changes or hearty riffs for the headbangers among us, either. "The Bears of Cantabria Shall Sleep No More" is some of that Appalachian protest folk I mentioned earlier. You have to make the words fit the song yourself (The group has always been instrumental), but the ideas are all present.

One of the reasons this is such a complete album and better presented than past efforts is that the artwork accompanies the music perfectly. Local artist Courtney Chappell has painted a vivid but pessimistic picture in the eight-page booklet, and while these paintings are fantastic, their innate sense of dread really shows itself when you're listening to the conclusion of "Prosthetic Go."

That's a lot of words to say what I've already summed up: Ahleuchatistas play, and they play hard. You, you shut up and listen. The reward is that, through the jazz breakdowns and the careful plucking of every string and the ear-splitting skin-beating of the drums, you come to find that this very special band is doing something more than mere math-rock, or jazz-punk, or even politically charged music on a very broad level. They have made another subtle step forward that has produced their most carefully constructed and brilliantly executed album to date. If you turn out to enjoy this as much as I did, do yourself a favor and go make a memory of your own by seeing them live. Who knows, someday you may be bragging/blogging to all your friends about it. Stranger things have happened.