Math rock is something of a loaded term, its blanket label seeping into many other corners and sub-sub genres of music. What does math rock connote exactly? Is it the instrumental spaceiness and stuttered rhythms of post rock that define its stylistic berth or does it owe more to the jazz-fusion oriented styling of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and King Crimson? It’s a broad and extremely subjective realm and many artists placed under the marquee of “math rock” actively despise and resent the term to define their art. Why then create a list of math rock albums if the term is so ephemeral and conducive to the ever increasing genre-fication of music? BECAUSE WE CAN!!!! WAAHAHAHA!!!! Seriously, though; this list seeks to bring a handful of albums, be they well-regarded masterpieces or forgotten nuggets of joy, together under the auspice of truly awesome music that we here at Phaserr love! All of these albums possess dizzying heights of complex rhythmic time changes, punishing, off kilter dissonance and true displays of technical ability and stamina.

“It’s a broad and extremely subjective realm”

This isn’t a countdown or top five kind of list; merely it’s the albums that can be attributed to this genre that we love and cherish. And after reading, if you feel like we lost the plot and forgot your favorite album, let us know why it is representative of math rock. We’ll even add it to the list if you convince us!

Massacre – Killing Time
Celluloid/Rec Rec/ Fred Records
Released: 1981
Massacre - Killing Time
Massacre - Subway Hearts
Massacre’s Killing Time is an amazing, twisting record that seems like an anachronism given the time period in which it was released. 1981! WHAT?!?!? Hailing from New York City, Massacre, comprised of Fred Frith on guitar, Bill Laswell on bass and Fred Maher on drums, demolished the boundaries of what constituted complexity in rock music. This was the band’s only release with the original lineup, reforming in 1998 with Charles Hayward from This Heat fame. Killing Time, however, remains their opus to this day. Drawing upon breakneck chord and rhythm changes supplemented with jazzy improvisations and over-arching aggression, Killing Time sounds like your favorite contemporary, time signature defying bands throwing it down 30 years before they were formed!!! This album is a must have just to hear “Subway Hearts” roll out of your speakers and hijack your consciousness. Absolutely killer, totally recommended.

Dillinger Escape Plan – Calculating Infinity
Relapse Records
Released: 1999
If you ever wanted a record to frighten all those within ear shot, your search is over! I’ll never forget my first experience with this album: laying on the floor of my friend’s dorm at UC Santa Cruz, wrapped in darkness and drifting off to sleep, Dillinger Escape Plan playing on my cd player. Cue “Sugar Coated Sour.” BOOM!! My heart beat didn’t drop for the next thirty minutes and I think I only got about an hour of sleep that night. This is a true beast of a record; brutal, punishing, impossibly complex and surfeit throughout with amazing performances. This album is so chock full of riffs and discordant rage that it took me about a year to truly “get it.” Jazzy bridges suddenly splinter into all out assaults that just as quickly melt into foreboding soundscapes, all at a breakneck and inhuman level of precision and skill. This album did much to lay the groundwork for aggressive and complex music to come, and is heralded as a cornerstone within the mathcore/metalcore genre (Think mathrock melded with hardcore punk elements). Regardless of which genre it represents or influenced, Calculating Infinity is an incredible and overwhelming listening experience from a band that has only gotten better with each new release (Seriously! Go check out Dillinger’s latest stuff! It rules!).

Battles – Mirrored
Warp Records
Released: 2007
Battles - Ddiamondd
Battles - Tij
What makes Battles’ Mirrored such a thrilling piece of art to listen to isn’t hinged upon the calculus-derived cacophony it’s band members manage to conjure nor the impossibly precise changes in tempo and texture that leave your parietal cortex all tore up. It’s more the wild-eyed thrill of hearing a brand new and totally different type of music flying out of your speakers; a wholly original, slightly unnerving blast of multi-colored, rhythmically complex, munchkin sung tracks that coalesce into a single, seething album experience. From the light speed staccato opener “Race: In” to the unhinged, keyboard whistling maelstrom of “Ddiamondd,” Battles tread some truly unique and heretofore unheard terrain, all why maintaining a strange whimsy that flits between even the most technical moments on the record. If Don Caballero had somehow been abducted into an acid fried Candy Land and then tasked with making a record, Mirrored would still be a thousand times crazier, as anyone who has heard “Atlas” can attest to. Battles early E.P.s are just as wonderful but do nothing to even remotely suggest the insanity they would unleash with Mirrored.

Mahavishnu Orchestra – Birds of Fire
Columbia Records
Released: 1973
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Celestial Terrestrial Commuters
A full on jazz album on this list?!? What’s going on here?? Well, when it’s as completely ass kicking and expertly played as Birds of Fire, there can be no confusion. This album is a complete and utter monster. Hearing “Birds of Fire” for the first time stands as one of the more eye opening moments in my life; to hear the technical mastery that jazz embodies married to the skull crush of hard rock opened more than a few doors for me in my musical journey. When this album was released in 1973, it had a similar seismic impact upon music culture and perception. There had been previous fusions of jazz and rock music, most notably with Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and Herbie Hancock’s Sextant and Headhunters albums, but nothing had so strikingly and powerfully melded the attack rock music can provide with the dazzling pyrotechnics of jazz performance. John Mclaughlin’s guitars shred out beastly dissonance over Jan Hammer’s (the guy who wrote the ‘Miami Vice theme song!) keyboards while Billy Cobham contributes some of the most virtuosic and exciting drumming ever with his double kick drum setup (the first ever to be used in a jazz recording!). While still more within the framework of a jazz recording, Birds of Fire represented the first appearance of what would come to shape complex and ultimately “mathy” rock textures for future artists beholden to virtuosic performance and dexterity paired with spine smashing power.

Dazzling Killmen – Face of Collapse
Skin Graft Records
Released: 1994
Dazzling Killmen - Staring Contest
Dazzling Killmen - Windshear
Inhumanly precise, Check. Ugly, flailing, madman vocals, Check. Punishing rhythms conjured from some other realm, Check Check Check! As the above list has so explicitly demonstrated, Face of Collapse completely rules. It’s a terrifying whirlwind of an album, a nightmare given a sonic equivalent as the unhinged howls of vocalist and guitarist Nick Sakes fight for ground over stuttering, fragmented passages conjured by the combined rhythmic might of drummer Blake Fleming and bassist Darin Gray. The opening thrust of “Staring Contest” is subsumed into the murk and start-stop lurch of “Bone Fragments” and is in turn annihilated by the frantic insanity of “My Lacerations.” For 1994, this is some intense, challenging music and it’s a shame this St. Louis quartet wasn’t given its due. But you can change that now by simultaneously drinking in the wonder and having your insides rattled to pieces by this record!

Don Caballero – What Burns Never Returns
Touch and Go Records
Released: 1998
Don Caballero’s What Burns Never Returns is an absolute wonderland of tricky beats, pummeling grooves and all around exciting instrumental rock. With original bassist Pat Morris rejoining the group, drummer Damon Che and guitarists Ian Williams and Mike Banfield let loose a multi-limbed hydra of precision playing and engaging song craft. There are honestly too many “how did they play that shit?!” moments on this album to feasibly count but the breathtakingly great “Delivering the Groceries at 138 Beats Per Minute” and epic opener “Don Caballero 3” contain some of the most propulsive and gut punching turns of the record. All of Don Cab’s albums are essential listening, but What Burns Never Returns shines just that much brighter amongst their discography.

Craw – Lost Nation Road
Choke Inc.
Released: 1994
Craw - Shocklight
Craw - All This Has Made Me
Depressing as hell and with vocals reminiscent of Steve Albini, Jesus Lizard’s David Yow and a hungry zombie, Lost Nation Road is a sonic journey through a post apocalyptic dream-hell and, thus, it is amazing. Drawling vocals limp over massive guitar attacks that begin a fractured melody only to never resolve, shift time-signature and rocket off in a completely new hellish direction. Lost Nation Road remains slippery and amorphous throughout, offering up crunchy grooves that dissipate suddenly into the maw of darkened atonal riffing with saxophones bleating over the top. Although some of the vocals and lyrics are unintentionally goofy, a real feeling of darkness and dread carries through the record, rendering the complexity and technical ability of Craw in a decidedly different and unique cast. Unfortunately, this Ohio based quartet remains criminally unrecognized despite the brilliance and originality of their records. Currently on the Hydrahead Records roster, do yourself a favor and pick up any of their releases; if nothing else it will give you the perfect soundtrack by which you can draw up your zombie apocalypse survival plans.