Car Bomb

The New York City-area quartet CAR BOMB has been sculpting its own signature sound and cementing its identity as an outlier, above the fray, inspiring a legion of younger musicians in the process. The extreme metal innovators celebrate their 25th year with a new EP titled "Tiles Whisper Dreams.” In a genre built on shock and awe, it is tough to be shocking or awe-inspiring these days. But Car Bomb manage to pull this off with tracks jam-packed with perpetual transformation: a spiraling flurry of rhythm and texture that congeals, fleetingly, into planet-pulverizing death-grooves and fragments of haunting melodies. Baffling rhythmic modulations and deep-space guitar effects appear to warp time completely. Disorientation is the rule, not the exception.  One could spend weeks trying to calculate the twists and turns of Car Bomb's compositions but, zoom out, surrender to the chaos, and there is another experience to be had: complete catharsis. While there is joy in trying to dissect the elite chops and maniacal arrangements that guitarist Greg Kubacki, drummer Elliot Hoffman, bassist Jon Modell, and singer Michael Dafferner put forth, there is also joy in reveling in the ineffable, unknowable spaces their confounding music explores. The fact that this band continues to explore, 25 years in, makes it one of the real treasures of today's metal scene.