Caterpillar – Flux Amuck (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

You can make a good case for the argument that all major musical styles and forms are pretty much established now. All you can hope to do to move things forward is to conduct weird sonic experiments using these base sounds looking to concoct new musical compounds. Some minor chemists might dilute rock’s might with pop melody, others modernise folk traditions with indie cool. And then there is Flux Amuck, sonic Alchemists who are able to turn base metal into funky fusion gold.

Trying to work out where their core sound starts really depends on which angle you come from. It’s a bit like holding a gem up to the light and watching its colours shift as you turn it. Catch the suns rays one way and you get a hard funk groove, shift a fraction and you find flows of technical rock guitar, then raw shards of bombastic progressive metal…shifting melodies, changeable dynamics, flowing time signature changes…and on and on into the weird, kaleidoscopic firmament. Unique is a word which seems to be overused in the hyperbolic world of music writing these days, seemingly levelled at every gap-year troubadour with a wide-brimmed hat and an acoustic guitar who has happened to stumbled across A minor and a Nick Drake album. Flux Amuck is deserving of such an accolade for all the right reasons.

Ideas turn into trends, trends into a zeitgeist, zeitgeists into fashion, because people are happy to head en mass down obvious pathways and well-signposted roads. Caterpillar is the sound of a band hacking a creative path through thick jungle, carving their own path, exploring areas on the edge of the map, areas quite possibly marked “Here be dragons.”

And if all of the styles and genres are pretty much established, the true artists, the real creative geniuses, are those who are able to take those recognisable building blocks and raise them up into new and glorious slabs of sonic architecture, cathedrals of creativity, beacons of musical hope. And that is what Flux Amuck do so well. Look closely at the brickwork and you can see the rock urges, the funky energy, the Nu-Metal groove, the rap-rock echoes, the tips of the hat to the likes of Faith No More, Primus and Rage Against the Machine. Step back and you will see something utterly new and forward-thinking, breathtaking and mosh-inducing.

What a great way to kick the year off. My first review of 2021 and what a way to start afresh and leave the horrors of the last 12 months behind. Caterpillar feels like an omen of a better year ahead and that’s good enough for me!