2007's Chronicles Of An Aging Mammal remains one of the craziest (and unfortunately, most overlooked) entries in the avant-garde death metal field from the past decade, a hyper-creative opening statement from this strange side-project from Vile / Abraxas / Monstrosity / Divine Rapture front-man Mike Hrubovcak. That album's mix of punishing death metal, futuristic prog rock, weird IDM / electronica elements and complex stitchworks of off-kilter samples and sounds was ambitious to say the least, and had a lot more in common with the otherworldly electronic/black metal experimentation of bands like Dodheimsgard and Thorns and the ornate experimentation of Arcturus than anything that I've ever heard from any of Hrubovcak's other bands. It's been six years since that album came out, but Hrubovcak has finally returned with a new Azure Emote record, The Gravity Of Impermanence, and it's just as sprawling and imaginative and deliriously strange as the band's debut, with fourteen songs that stretch out across multiple genres and sounds, winding it's labyrinthine death-prog experiments through an unpredictable landscape filled with gorgeous violin sections, freaked-out prog rock raveups, skittery electronica and a myriad of other elements woven into Azure Emote's bizarre tapestry of alien conspiracy theories, quotes taken from assisted-suicide guru Jack Kevorkian and arcane metaphysical visions. Those looking for a crushing riff won't be disappointed, as Gravity is loaded with 'em, but just as the band locks into one of their monstrous down-tuned chugs or angular grooves, the music will suddenly veer into haunting chamber strings and folk melodies draped over furious double-bass drumming, lush soundtrack synthscapes, operatic female vocals soaring over strange abstract glitchscapes and Autechre-esque rhythms, or bursts into some killer proggy keyboard wankery, always backed up with the metallic guitars and ferocious blasting rhythm section. This produces some incredible moments, like the folk-n'-opera flecked death metal majesty of "Puppet Deities" and "Veils Of Looming Despair", the jazz-fusion laced math-death epic "Dissent", and the crushing saxophone-fueled heaviness of "Obsessive Time Directive" and "The Living Spiral", both of which feature a guest saxophone performance from Yakuza's Bruce Lamont. Hrubovcak's unique vision is fleshed out with the help of a number of other notable musicians from the extreme metal/avant rock underground, with guest appearances from members of Malignancy, Monstrosity, Total Fucking Destruction, Tristania and Hate Eternal rounding out the lineup. If ever there was a death metal band that would have fit on the Tzadik label, it's this one, a Technicolor assault of brainy, confusional avant-death that sits right alongside the likes of Sigh and Thy Catafalque. Highly recommended!