Ever since I first heard their awesome self-titled album from 2005, Collapsar have been one of my favorite instrumental metal bands. The Lousiana based trio blew me away with their first album, a dizzying concoction of cosmic psychedelic speed metal, carefully calculated prog, and flourishes of jazz and math rock that made for some of the most epic soundtrack metal in recent years. Collapsar guitarists Adam Harris and Stephen Sheppert weaved their axes together into inextricably complex melodies and dynamic, thrashtastic riffing enhanced by a subtle but extremely effective use of delay and chorus effects, and drummer Brett Judice created an intricate architecture of sudden time signature changes and angular rhythms that would open up into panoramas of crushingly beautiful epic rock. That album is still one of the best instrumental metal albums I've ever heard, impossibly complex yet breathtakingly beautiful, with soaring psychedelic soloing that continues to stun me every time I listen to the disc.

Almost three years later, their second album Integers is finally here, and it's everything that I was hoping for. Each of the six songs on Integers is a riff feast, again super intricate and technical but tied together with amazing melodies, ferocious time changes and those soaring psychedelic solos. Beginning with the raging, focused aggression of the opener "Axiomatic Fragment", Collapsar's twin guitars are locked together in precision, ripping through a nine minute exercise in maze-like math/thrash riffing that races up and down the fretboards before sliding into a shimmering melodic indi-dirge in the middle of the song that could pass as a particularly proggy Pelican jam. "The Great Caldera" follows with a blizzard of spazzy riffing and endless tom rolls that build to an excruciating level of tension, and then release into angular thrash metal and a crushing outro riff. The epic 11 minute �Spooky Action at a Distance� is one of my favorites songs on here, and it traverses everything from anthemic indie rock to mellow math rock workouts a la Don Cab and back to the awesome crunching riffage and galactic sound effects of the second half of the track that sound like a spacey fusion of Meshuggah and King Crimson.

The next two songs �He�s got an Axe!� and �Drilling Holes through Space� continue the interplay between convulsive technical metal riffs, spacey jazz textures, abrupt downshifts into sludgy heaviness, and dissonant math rock. And then the album comes to "The Forever War", the nineteen minute closing track that winds through all of the various styles Collapsar collectively employs, while focusing on a crushing central riff that serves as the primary motif for the song, even slipping into a bit of sludgy swamp metal for a moment that betrays their Southern origins. The track finally ends with a sleek extended ambient drone that ends Integers on a calm but ominous note.

This is essential for fans of progressive instrumental metal - if you were into their debut as much as we were, you'll love what they are doing here, and anyone that's a fan of bands like Breadwinner, Don Cabellero, The Fucking Champs, Suzukiton, Dazzling Killmen, and other technical, riff-wielding masters of metallic prog shreddery needs to hear Collapsar fast! Highly recommended!