While many reached for comfortable tribalism, degenerative normalcy and whatever cobbled together puddle of meaning they could grasp with their greasy pincers beyond anno pestis MMXX the folks behind New York City-based avant-garde progressive death metal quintet Sarmat lost themselves in the challenge of creating a far-out science fiction world at war by way of a mutant jazz fusion’d avant-death metallic voice. Seemingly improvisational in the guidance of each missile yet mathematical in its core formatting their debut full-length ‘Determined to Strike‘ is recklessly indulgent, scrambling and scaling in its trumpet-crowned and freely sloshing prog metal rhythms to a point of eerily effective evocation and swaying-mad momentum. Brass gilded dissonance, oil-slicked shred-level meander and odd-stepping movements characterize the listening experience with heavy flowing and surprising mannerisms all of which begins to manifest as an addition to the greater jazz-death conundrum rather than the usual drain upon it.

As far as I’ve gathered Sarmat formed as a pandemic co-op project between members of New York-centered groups Tower, Imperial Triumphant, and folks from the live Artificial Brain setup alongside vocalist Andrew Gonzalez serving as the only fellow I’ve not heard of before. Their focus is fairly simple in design but virtuosic in its minutiae and movement with a style centered around the complimentary functions and rhythmic playground shared between avant-garde jazz fusion and progressive death metal. There is no shortage of both-ways collusion between the extreme niches of jazz and death metal today but those choices tend to come with rigid rhythmic traditions beyond related groups. In fact it wasn’t until the last decade or so that we’d found jazz fusion explored in any real practicum per extreme metal beyond amateur-level flourish as inspiration for niche artists. I wouldn’t personally consider the work found here as typical in that sense thanks to prominent use of brass instruments as a lead or guitar-paired voice as well as a somewhat improvised or emergent feeling in the rapidly buzzing, rambling rhythms and vocals of ‘Determined to Strike‘.

After the album was finished circa ~2021 the band recorded a separate limited release (‘Dubious Disc‘, 2023) essentially a live in studio improvised medley inspired by ‘Determined to Strike‘ which serves the best preview of the run-on rhythmic movements one can expect from Sarmat in general while directly touching upon a few choice motif featured on the album. It’ll be a bit of brain scrambler to start but if you’re prone to the brutal edge of math metal, prog-death abstraction and generally have fortitude enough to sit through a half hour of trumpet/saxophone lit extreme metal this should be a quick nuke to soak heat off for a while; The full length is more substantial in terms of actions per minute and its well-considered yet flailing virtuosic delivery but this is clearly music which benefits enormously from a live performance, or, the presence of the performers in action especially when we consider my favorite part of this group, the rhythm section. Drummer James Jones and bassist/pianist Steve Blanco feel righteously suited for this style of fixated, mathematical movement which is never entirely as abstracted or austere as Imperial Triumphant‘s own Zorn-esque moving target but still manages to explore said territory in a raw arte-death sense. “Landform” is probably the best piece on the full listen to showcase all of these elements sans any brass instrumental focus and a creeping noir sense of movement that we don’t find elsewhere on the run-through.

The core success of ‘Determined to Strike‘ is its admixture of conversational stream of consciousness free jazz movement with the grotesque grumble and burst of avant-death metal and when these things combine they naturally vex into wobbly, spiraling dissociation to start. Opener “Formed From Filth” and later on “Arsenal of Tyranny” speak through their guitar lines which are lucid, cleanly connective and often persistent throughout a full song (especially the latter) and because of this the vocal patternation naturally presents the biggest challenge in pairing since several of these pieces could manage the same impact as instrumental metal. Fortunate for us Gonzalez‘ expression is fittingly over the top, varied and erratic to the point that it suits Sarmat quite well even when it becomes obviate that vocals weren’t necessarily the main focus of the songwriters. For my own taste “Arsenal of Tyranny” is the floodgate, the piece which begins breaking through and moving from the performative to the lizard-brained introspection of “Enervated”, a piece which consistently served as the peak of the listening experience and the most impactful spike wherein Sarmat began to loosen up, run-on down the chain a bit deeper than prior and let their tunneling nature find its buzzing on-the-edge wrath. I’d particularly loved the mimic of the lead guitars by the trumpet (per Cameron Carella) and how the rhythmic hits function within the closing moments of the song.

When I’d first read the “for fans of” section of the press release and saw Mahavishnu Orchestra (as in early 70’s?) nearby Defeated Sanity I didn’t think it’d honed in squarely enough on that combination within the first crack of the bat, as I moved towards Side B the critical madness of this narrative started to become more clear in tone and in terms of the ever-jamming presentation. This isn’t as brutal as any weirding death metal comparison I could cook up but you do get the sense that this is not a canned or underfed reference to the chaotic and technical realm of (semi) brutal death metal otherwise. Anyhow, you’ve gotten the gist of the style and the above-average treatment plus moment-to-moment nausea available to this music which nearly created enough of a spectacle that I’d forgotten to pay attention to the lyricism and finer details to start. A good sign overall for a record which goes places within a singularly representative set of traits and they do appear to be going somewhere with it since this record has been proposed as Part I of a trilogy. The rest should very well be open to your own interpretation for the sake of its virtuosic, challenging fluidity. A high recommendation.

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