FEATURE > ANIMALS AS LEADERS
Photo by Jonathan Weiner
Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes—Animals as Leaders’ jaw-dropping dual-
guitar team—live up to their name and create a new progressive-rock
beast by cross-breeding jazz, classical, and metal techniques in a way
that simultaneously blows your mind and defies the genre’s stereotypes.
BY JOE CHARUPAKORN
“It’s a few genres combined into one. It’s like progressive metal, progres-
sive jazz … space metal,” says Tosin
Abasi, founder of Animals as Leaders,
when pressed to pigeonhole his band into
a category. And he’s right—in the course
of a single AAL song, your ears might
be assaulted by math-metal djent-isms
with bittersweet Lydian sonorities,
tapped open-voice triads, contrapuntal
textures, 8-string slapping and popping
that sounds like a cross between Victor
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PREMIER GUITAR FEBRUARY 2012 87
