THE ALGORITHM

We have come a long way from those formative days in the '80s when bands used to proclaim "no synthesizers!" at the end of their exhaustive thank you lists. Metal's relationship with electronic music is well-documented and definitely doesn't need explaining again here. But you could be forgiven for being thoroughly sick of the sound of synthesizers at this point, such is their ubiquity in both mainstream alternative music and the pop mainstream in general. If you can tolerate a few more vaguely metal-adjacent electronica records, however, then THE ALGORITHM remains the most straightforwardly entertaining crossover synth operator around. Widely associated with the tech-metal and djent scenes, Rémi Gallego has been creative and shrewd over the years, releasing a series of albums that each offered a unique take on the Frenchman's idiosyncratic formula. In much the same way that MASTER BOOT RECORD has stayed measurably apart from any notions of pure-blood synthwave by sounding like a heavy metal bombing campaign, THE ALGORITHM has always evaded easy categorization and simply sounds like himself, whether on the epic and bewildering "Compiler Optimization Techniques" (2018) or on this, his fifth and arguably most streamlined and direct full-length.

"Data Renaissance" crams every element that THE ALGORITHM have toyed with over years into crisp and clinical three-to-four-minute whirlwinds of overdriven technology. But despite that bedrock of digital data, the sound of big, loud guitars is equally essential to at least half of these tracks. In truth, on this occasion, Gallego is an electronic musician with heavy metal songwriting sensibilities, and "Data Renaissance" is more immediate and memorable than any previous album as a result. You can take your pick from the grinding, dubstep pulse of "Interrupt Handler", the wild, gabber-tinged throb of "Inline Assembly" or the industrial metal stutter-stomp of "Readonly" for the album's grittiest, most metal-friendly moment, but the disorientating, psychedelic bombast of "Cryptographic Memory" and the deeply wonky, goth-glitch nightmare of "Object Resurrection" are equally mesmerizing.

There are certainly moments of electronic purity here, but THE ALGORITHM's intuitive subversive streak is always lurking in the background. Even the jittery, insistent beats of "Multithreading" are gradually undermined by thick, viscous bass ooze and flashes of ghostly humanity. An album full of intelligence and verve, "Data Renaissance" is eccentric, enthralling and more than heavy enough to hit the spot.