When I first heard about Capsule online at one news site or another, I was under the impression that they were some sort of neuvo screamo outfit, but that's not the case at all. The Miami band showed up on Robotic Empire last year with their debut album, and it's a powerful introduction to Capsule's amazingly intricate brand of grindy hardcore. First off, the presentation for Blue sets this up for pretty high expectations. The album looks fucking gorgeous, packaged in a thick glossy gatefold jacket that is coated with a thick shiny varnish, with awesome artwork and the band name printed across the top of the front in a clear matte varnish, the CD version of the album included on the inside of the gatefold and attached to a set of flaps on the left side panel similiar to how Torche's In Return was designed, and the record situated in a side pocket. Man, the guys at Robotic Empire have been putting together the coolest dual LP/CD packages, and everyone that I've shown this Capsule album to has bugged out about how cool it looks.

And Capsule's music is equally impressive, and tough to slap a label on. Like I said, some of the early reports I had been reading about the Miami trio (which features a current member of Kylesa) made me think that this was going to be along the lines of late 90's screamo, which I was never a big fan of, but when I finally listened to Blue I was surprised to hear a super-intricate, mathy sort of prog-grind made up of tons of complex little parts and crazed song arrangements that demand that you listen to this album several times before yer able to wrap yer head around Capsule's detailed sound. Angular clusters of riffage collide with abrupt time changes and awesome drumming, but instead of total chaos we get these amazing off-kilter melodies that wind around the riffs and blastbeats, and the guitars are almost totally clean and undistorted, and it ends up sounding alot like the early 90s math rock that I grew up on, like hearing Bastro sped up and bent into new alien angles and turned into a frantic tech-grind freakout. The album peaks with the two middle tracks; "Determinal" starts off with a minute or so of dissonant, intricately layered riffs and manic blastbeats, but then drops into a slow, bludgeoning dirge that stretches out for nearly ten minutes, a crushing longform dronesludge trance that rolls over you endlessly, then "Blue/Green" follows that up with a dark, minimal instrumental soundscape that casts a sinister shadow across the remainder of Blue. Highly recommended!