Band:	Blotted Science
Album:	The Machinations Of Dementia
Style:	Instrumental, Progressive metal
Release date:	September 2007

01. Synaptic Plasticity
02. Laser Lobotomy
03. Brain Fingerprinting
04. Oscillation Cycles
05. Activation Synthesis Theory
06. R.E.M.
07. Night Terror
08. Bleeding In The Brain
09. Vegetation
10. Narcolepsy
11. E.E.G. Tracings
12. Sleep Deprivation
13. The Insomniac
14. Amnesia
15. Adenosine Breakdown
16. Adenosine Buildup

Blotted Science is an instrumental metal outfit consisting of guitarist Ron Jarzombek (famous for quite a number of other projects apparently, but as I'm not familiar with any of them I can't compare this CD to his other outputs) Alex Webster (Cannibal Corpse) and drummer Carlie Zeleny (Behold?The Arctopus).

It is hard to label Machinations Of Dementia with a certain musical style but what I can say for sure that it's technically over the top! If you still want a genre attachment other than "very progressive and technical" I'd say this album is more thrash metal than anything else, with some death metal elements too. But I doubt it matters much, as instrumental music which relies on technicality to the absolute max it doesn't sound like "just" thrash metal anyway. The music just sounds like a long row of different guitar and bass guitar solos and riffs stitched together and undermined with some very technical death metal drumming.

One of the things that make this CD great to me are the song titles. Something that should usually be the most unimportant thing about music but which gains a lot of importance through the lack of lyrics in this case. The titles all relate to brain physiology, psychological methods and sleep psychology. These being subjects that greatly interest me on a personal level the music, which usually fits perfectly to the title conjure up a lot of imagery in my mind. For example Vegetation (a vegetative state is a state in which the person is theoretically awake, but without any awareness whatsoever, you can imagine a guy just sitting in a chair all day staring at a point on a blank wall not reacting to anything that happens around him) is a short, dreamy and tranquil part in which not much happens at all, Narcolepsy (a condition in which the affected person can suddenly fall asleep during any time of the day (in bad cases)) is a mainly hectic piece with short dreamy intervals throughout the track, then it continues its hectic pace.

Technically this album is pretty much flawless and if you like technical instrumental stuff you should go for this one without second thought! But for me the main flaw of this CD is its length. Without offering much diversity it clocks in at 57 minutes. 40 minutes would have been a perfect length in my opinion and this would have tripled the re-listen value for me. As it is I might listen to this album for twenty minutes or half an hour from time to time, but I don't see myself sitting through the whole thing over and over, for what it is it's simply too long for me.