Written by: Paul Gleason

I’ve spent many hours of my life – hours amounting to years – trying to figure out the magic formula, the secret sauce, that makes certain bands grab hold of my heart and mind and not let go.

In recent years, partially thanks to my discussions with Kylesa’s Phillip Cope, my heart and mind have been pulled in the direction of South Carolina and Georgia, the unquestioned capitals of heavy music.

From Burnt Books to Mastodon, from Kylesa to Baroness, from Black Tusk to Harvey Milk, bands are creating experimental and challenging records that are leading the charge at the sonic front and forging an inspiring renaissance in heavy music.

Kylesa, through their record label Retro Futurist, is doing their best to capture this renaissance. Released earlier this year, Darkentries’ The Make Believe was a cathartic masterpiece of textured noise guitars, exploratory movements, and goth vocals. The album echoed Kylesa’s commitment to what I’ve always taken to be their two guiding principles: unbelievable experimental creativity and earnest emotion.

Now, Kylesa has done it again. They’ve managed to release yet another record on Retro Futurist whose originality, beauty, and sheer excitement will stop you in your tracks.

The record? The Beast of Left and Right. The band? Lazer/Wulf.

Lazer/Wulf call Athens and Atlanta their home. They’re a trio – Bryan Aiken on guitar, Sean Peiffer on bass, and Brad Rice on drums – who play music as if their lives depended on it. Better, they play music as if they’re a trio of explorers who are unafraid to delve into every nook and cranny of where their muse takes them.

This means that Lazer/Wulf’s guiding principles – and the guiding spirit of The Beast of Left and Right – are adventurousness and unpredictability.

Lazer/Wulf genre hops like no other band in recent memory (they actually remind me of their fellow Georgians in OutKast and, yes, Kylesa). When you listen to The Beast of Left and Right, many of whose compositions clock in at over five minutes, you depart on musical odysseys. You’re like a crewman on a starship of astral discovery; only your stars exist in alignments of never-before-heard musical constellations.

These constellations – as constructed by Aiken, Peiffer, and Rice – aren’t bound or predetermined by any thesis, map, or legend. Rather, they incorporate the freeform and spontaneous playing styles of master musicians who know jazz, metal, progressive rock, and (dare I say it?) the catchiness of a good pop hook.

Catchy complexity? Adventurous unpredictability?

That’s right. Just listen to the first song on The Beast of Left and Right – “Choose Again.” It’s a nine-minute epic that sounds like Radiohead, Primus, and Opeth got together for a jam session. Rice leads the way with his jazzy drums, and Peiffer plays bass like Les Claypool has entered his body. Aiken’s dominant guitar riffing holds the piece together, leading Lazer/Wulf into positively symphonic moments, whose structures are as complex, challenging, and invigorating as anything by Radiohead and Opeth.

But here’s the thing. Lazer/Wulf construct The Beast of Left and Right as a palindrome, so that the record itself sounds like a symphony, with motifs recurring in “opposite” songs in different permutations. For example, the opposite song to “Choose Again” is track nine, the much shorter “Mutual End,” which uses the exact same chords, riffs, and drum tracks as “Choose Again,” but it has more prominent vocals and a sustained, moody feel. It’s astonishing that Lazer/Wulf can take the same set of musical ideas and craft two different songs that vary so much in atmosphere.

Rice’s star shines brightly on “Lagarto” – one of the best tracks on The Beast of Left and Right. His opening drum riff is so creative, so irresistible, that you’ll find yourself hammering it out on your kitchen table, steering wheel, or wherever you may find yourself. Aiken contributes a bevy of mountainous riffs and spiraling solos, and Peiffer takes the song to the stratosphere with one of the coolest bass solos this side of Geddy Lee.

In fact, all of “Lagarto” smacks of the sheer enjoyment of making music, of entering into a voyage of discovery with like-minded people. If you’ve heard Rush’s “YYZ” (and I know you have), you know that the guys in Lazer/Wulf are coming from the same place as Lee-Lifeson-Peart.

“Who Were the Mound Builders” is the opposite song to “Lagarto.” It continues to demonstrate Lazer/Wulf’s commitment to exploration by employing an acoustic guitar. It’s also the thematic flipside to “Largarto,” with the former investigating, as T.S. Eliot would say, “death by water,” and the latter envisioning a union of space and earth – an idea, as Aiken told me, derived from Native American creation myths.

With The Beast of Left and Right, Retro Futurist has done it again. They’ve located an insanely creative band – Lazer/Wulf – and released a record that’s so chock full of ideas and energy that it will make your giddy head spin.