In 2004 Razorback Records released a collections of recordings by John Brown’s solo cyber goregrind project Gigantic Brain entitled The Invasion Discography. Contained within the album’s 63 tracks was some of the most sinister and twisted music ever recorded, overflowing with references to aliens, packed with Nintendo game riffs and an eerie atmosphere that left the listener feeling like they were being probed by a thousand aliens and their bizarre devices.

2008′s offering, World, is an entirely different beast than it’s predecessor. World contains 17 tracks of weird ambient cybergrind with the majority of the material having a more melodic and a much less threatening sound than The Invasion Discography. For those of you familiar with Gigantic Brain‘s previous offering, what you can expect from World is material along the lines of “My Aftermath” and the beginning of “Together, We Make A Family”. Needless to say it’s a huge change.

That’s not to say World is a peaceful creature, it still has razor sharp claws and a hunger for destruction and the album does contain several tracks with the eerie distortion used on The Invasion Discography with drum machine blasts and inhuman shrieks and snarls, but for the most part World is a lurker, hiding in the woods, patiently and quietly waiting for it’s prey before it strikes.

World contains a lot more melodic keyboard work than John displayed on his previous efforts. More than 90% of the album is him playing slow, emotive keyboard-based songs. The fast alien cybergrinding prevalent on The Invasion Discography is few and far between, but when it does kick in it’s very powerful, although very few songs have that style for more than a few seconds before reverting back to the melodic ambiance and when John does pick up the guitar he tends to play what can only be described as melodic radio-friendly riffs.

I think it’s extremely important that people realize that World isn’t a continuation of The Invasion Discography. If you’re hoping for 30 minutes of insane alien mind controlling grindcore you’re going to be greatly disappointed. Bluntly, metal and grindcore fans are very fickle who don’t appreciate change at all. The majority of the people who went apeshit over The Invasion Discography are going to hate World because the insane grinding is only on the album for a few minutes out of the entire disc. While there isn’t a lot of it, the stuff that is here is fucking intense. Tracks like “Colors Of Bone And Blood”, “Final Life” and “Melting Brain” sound exactly like the next wave of insane grinding you’d expect after listening to The Invasion Discography. World is just one part The Invasion Discography and one part something else entirely.

Now that I’ve gone into detail about what World isn’t, I’ll discuss what World is, and that is a very weird slab of emotive ambient music. The tracks all have a weird vibe to them, some of the songs, like “Debris”, contain no vocals, it’s just very slow and gentle waves of sound, building gradually then crashing into the rocks before the next wave flows through. There are often mechanical sounds mixed in with the gentle keyboard playing. World really sounds like the perfect album to use as a soundtrack for an alien invasion flick. There’s the soft gentle keyboarding for the moments where humanity shows they have hope and spirit, the eerie atmosphere for when the aliens are on the prowl and finally the insanely chaotic laser battle when the aliens attack.

While World is the exact opposite of what I expected, I can’t say that I hated it. In fact, I really really like it. The music has a greater depth to it and it’s much easier to listen to 30 minutes of World than 30 minutes of The Invasion Discography. You get a break in between having your face smashed in. I would liked to have seen a bit less of the ambiance and more of the cybergrind because that’s what everyone who buys this album is going to want to hear, but everything is well done and well played with a solid production. World isn’t going to be for everybody, either you’ll love it for what it is or you’ll hate it for what it isn’t. The best way to decide for yourself is to hit Gigantic Brain‘s MySpace page ( http://www.myspace.com/giganticbrain ) and listen to “We Come Together In A Hell” and “World”. If you like those two tracks, you’ll love the album. If you hate them, stick with The Invasion Discography and don’t even bother with World, although if you do you’ll be missing out on a quality release. Look for this album to be released sometime in the fall on Mainstay Recordings.

Review byTeufel