These guys have been blowing my mind ever since I first slapped their Deep In The Mental7"""" on the table back in '95, but for some reason they've never managed to really break out in a big way. Mighta been due to the fact that Candiria has toured primarily with nu-metal bands for the past several years, and this shit probably goes right over the heads of most of the kids that turn out for those bills. In any event, Candiria's deftly connected streams of monolithic, jazz-damaged metalcore, fusion jazz, and hip hop trance has made for one of the most cerebral and whiplash inciting genrefucks to emerge in the turn of the century. 300 Percent Density, their 2001 full length and first for Century Media, followed several albums on Too Damn Hype from the late 90's including their dizzying Surrealistic Madness debut, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, and Process Of Self Development. It's one of their most focused works, the multiple chapter tracks seamlessly merging fucking chunktastic offtime ultra-technical stop/start riffing n' brutal syncopated growling vocals that carry some serious deathmetal weight with pure prog rock structures, detours into clean urban jazz and extended fusion jams a la Mahavishnu Orchestra or Return To Forever ('The Obvious Destination'), dark, trancey Wu Tang/Kool Keith-esque hip hop ('Without Water') and spastic nocturnal electronica ('Opposing Meter'), as drummer Kenneth Schalk's time warping polyrhythms tumble like kaleidoscope fragments all over the 11 songs. There's also a brief but haunting track of heavy feedback drone and urban field recordings that sounds like it could have come from Spylacopa, the somber ambient side-project of Candiria guitarist John LaMacchia, and the band uses other sounds like digeridoo and delayed trumpet to create eerie spatial shifts. Listening to this album again, I'm reminded again just how much these guys sound like the second coming of Voivod as filtered through an array of 21st century urban sounds. It's that fucked up and perplexing, and it's all delivered with such stunning musicianship that you've gotta hit rewind at least a couple of times just to parse what you just heard them play. Totally amazing that still defies catagorization. And that hidden track at the end is pure ambient jazz bliss that stretches out on a deep blue cloud for over 20 minutes, so don't touch those buttons.