Finally back in print on CD, Atheist's mind-melting third album Elements is reissued as a deluxe CD and DVD set via Season Of Mist; the CD version features the album and a live radio broadcast from 1992, while the DVD is loaded with a wealth of rare live footage, including live sets in Holland, Montreal, and Chicago captured between 1992 and 1993, and capped off with an interview with the band from January 1992. It's by far the most exhaustive CD release this album has received to date, killer stuff.

      Out of all of the death metal bands that were flirting with prog and avant-garde tendencies in the early 90's (a crowd that included the likes of Pestilence, Cynic, Death and Nocturnus), Atheist was the one that seemed to venture the furthest into full-blown jazz territory, releasing a trio of albums that would continue to mutate more and more into a strange sort of experimental fusion-death that liberally applied elements of tripped-out psychedelia, sweat-soaked samba (!) and similar Latin influences into their complex, crushing metal. Atheist's three albums (1989's Piece of Time, 1991's Unquestionable Presence and 1993's mind-bending Elements) went on to become landmarks in the field of progressive death metal; though the band reunited in recent years and produced the solid comeback album Jupiter for Season Of Mist, it's those earlier albums that I always go back to, as these guys sounded so unique, so outr�, their music has aged remarkably well in the decades since their release. Founded by guitarist Kelly Shaefer (who also handled the vocals in Atheist, with a ferocious yowl that was totally unlike the guttural growling most other bands were doing back then) and his crew of pot-smoking visionaries in the early 80's as a standard issue thrash metal band, by the end of the decade they had evolved into one of the most unique metal bands to ever come out of the Sunshine State, morphing into something much more complex and left-field than almost anyone else in the Floridian death metal scene, combining dizzying baroque arrangements and highly complex time signatures with vicious, discordant riffs and heavy doses of fusiony jazz, Latin music and prog influences. Unsurprisingly, these albums went over the heads of most metalheads when they originally came out, the complexity and insane tonal shifts throwing most 'bangers for a loop. They never received the sort of widespread acclaim that many of their peers enjoyed throughout the 90's, and Atheist ended up breaking up not long after the release of their third album Elements.

      On album number three, listeners followed Atheist all the way down their weird rabbit-hole of surreal songwriting and jazz/samba influenced prog meshed with crushing staccato death metal heaviness. Despite the fact that Elements was in essence a rush-job that the band belted out quickly to finish off their contract, the album was an intense, accomplished work that featured some of Atheist's most imaginative songwriting ever. Most of the songs are titled after various elemental forces, continuing in the band's strange New Age-style themes of spirituality, and their Byzantine songwriting was further fleshed out with polyrhythmic drumming, complex time signatures and unpredictable shifts in style and tone that often completely abandoned the death metal form. Cynic bassist Tony Choy returned as well, contributing his virtuosic deep-pocket playing that the band wisely put way up front in the mix. Choy's playing is a big part of what makes this album sound so unique, his grooves more informed by jazz, funk and Latin influences than the plodding chug of classical heavy metal. The song "Mineral" breaks into one of the sickest and most unusual death metal breakdowns I have ever heard, while elsewhere the band blends soaring guitar solos, fusiony shredding and haunting e-bow textures into gorgeous abstract guitar instrumentals like "Fractal Point" and "See You Again". And all throughout Elements, the band swerves from that wicked metallic heaviness into frenetic samba session or searing Latin jazz style guitar solos, with some full-on samba appearing on the piano-laced interlude "Samba Briza". I know that this stuff blew my mind the first time I listened to this album, I can only imagine how other death metal fans might have reacted when they first heard this wild, jazz-infected progdeath back in 1993. Atheist's rhythmic complexity and stylistic indulgences were like no other band; in fact, in the twenty years since Elements first came out, the only band that has even come close to capturing the sort of bizarre, mind-bending jazzmetal virtuosity heard here would be Brooklyn's Candiria. A lot of Atheist fans consider their second album to be their finest, but for me, Elements remains the band's career high point, a masterpiece of memorable, utterly unique, highly adventurous metal. Highly recommended.