When music approaches maximum complexity, vocal melodies just get in the way. Thankfully, djent – a highly technical offshoot of progressive metal – also produces purely instrumental albums.
There’s a rhetorical figure of speech that dates back to ancient Rome, hence the Latin name: pars pro toto. It means naming a part to represent the whole. For example, if someone is said to be a “bright mind,” of course they still have a body and legs. If someone plays “a slick string,” they’re obviously playing the rest of the strings – and the entire instrument. When a new musical style stands out from its predecessors in one particular way, that detail can become a pars pro toto. A new rhythmic feel – and suddenly the style is called swing. A harder kind of beat – and now we’ve got beat music. A distinct guitar chord sound – and we get djent.
For the past 30 years, the phenomenon of djent has been haunting the world of progressive metal. It all started with the guitarist of the Swedish band Meshuggah, who played this dark, distorted, palm-muted power chord, and coined the onomatopoeic word “djent” (pronounced: “jent”) to describe the sound. And since Meshuggah are considered the god-geniuses of complex metal (“they rebuilt metal from the ground up in abstract form”), this “djent” sound drove half the scene crazy. People would passionately debate whether djent is a new genre, a subgenre or perhaps a microgenre. Periphery guitarist Misha Mansoor answered the question in 2023 with an album title: Djent Is Not A Genre. Djent certainly is a sound though – one that’s typical of complex progressive metal. It defines the Meshuggah style: angular, syncopated riffs, polymetric rhythms, and jaw-droppingly virtuosic improvisations. Whether a band is considered “djent” is something the prog-metal artists decide for themselves. And since only the “really cool bands” claim the label, Periphery’s Misha Mansoor can live with that.
Among the top djent bands in the world is Animals As Leaders from Washington, D.C. This instrumental trio is the elite unit of lightning-fast, mathematically complex tech-prog. Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes work magic on their eight-string guitars, unleashing wild, flickering lines and stuttering staccato riffs, tightly woven together in breathless patterns. “We compose our music on the computer,” they say. Crowds of young guitarists flock to their shows. The Madness of Many (2016, Sumerian) was already their fourth album.
Triumphant guitar themes soar over densely layered, breakneck, hard-as-metal musical textures. Electronic elements add some bizarre soundscapes. Their improvisations seem to rip holes in the space-time continuum. Just trying to count the beats can tie your brain in knots – one reviewer identified “numerous 127/13 time signatures.”
Since vocals would only distract from this kind of artistic madness, we’re sticking with instrumental bands. Scale the Summit sees the absence of vocals as a challenge (the music has to carry more weight), but also as a form of creative freedom (no need for verses and choruses). In laid-back Texas, djent sounds a bit more relaxed, colorful, and mellow. The syncopated riffs are playfully stacked, the tone palette shifts in a kind of “adventure metal” style. While the sound is far from retro prog, you can at least convince yourself there’s a touch of melody going on. V (2015, Prosthetic), their fifth album, was still recorded in a four-piece lineup.
These days, the band – centered around guitarist Chris Letchford – is a trio like Animals as Leaders. While the distinct “djent guitar tone” isn’t their main focus, the twisty, djent-style prog-metal riffing definitely is.
From Australia comes The Omnific, a band described by experts as “somewhere between djent, experimental metal, and technical prog.” Matt Pack and Toby Peterson-Stewart prove that djent can work just fine without guitars – just with two basses, which can also growl and purr with power. “Our basses do everything the guitars normally do,” say the two “Bass Boys” (their own nickname). Without the usual drone and metal-guitar textures, their sound is refreshingly lean and finely tuned. The dizzying technical skill of these bass djentlemen sometimes even edges into the realm of virtuoso jazz. Escapades (2021, Wild Thing) was their first proper studio album.
