For a project with some truly high-grade Instrumental Metal music, these guys sure use a terribly illegible logo! But heck, that's not what this is about, is it?
As stated in the band's bio (citation, with small alterations to fit website standards) “Yantra consists of three passionate, hardworking Metal musicians. Mike Mattice and Jeff Bobbin met in Boston, Massachusetts pursuing common musical interests. The guitar duo originally started writing its first long player record entitled Beauty And Balance. Soon after, they auditioned local Boston drummers, until they finally reconnected with Jake Gabriszeski, Mikes first roommate at the Berklee institute, and accepted him as an official member”! With both guitarists also acting as bass players, the trio first recorded a 3-track EP which they released in January of 2012, and then recorded 7 more tracks to get the full-length Beauty And Balance, which they released in Nov. of 2012. Since then, the guys apparently already took in an actual bass player (or at least, have been making pictures of the band as a foursome), but have neglected to mention the dude's name.
Okay, now some talk about the music...first in the band's own words : “Yantra is a project designed for listeners who desire detail, proficiency, and captivation. Technicality is an essential aspect in conveying multidimensional concepts and emotional assimilation. Each song is comprised of sacred geometrical sequence, Fibonacci rhythmic motives, and meticulously head bang-able time signatures. Yantra is evolving to accommodate its listeners by sharing love, intellectual stimulation and refined musical ideology.” Sounds grandiose, doesn't it...but what does it really mean? In essence, the guys play a relatively complex Technical Metal, which finds the guys running the scales quite a lot at a variety of paces. Fibonacci now, was a 12-13th Century Italian mathematician (real name Leonardo Pisano, as one would have said in those days – in modern Italian his name would be da Pisa), whom either developed or discovered (in his early days he's spent a lot of time in Northern Africa a lot, where he studied Arab numerals, among other) this interesting sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,... (the two preceding numbers sum up to the next one), which translated to musical (an less “intellectual”) terms, I guess, makes for the musicians running up and down the scales quite a lot. At any rate, that's something the guys do quite a lot...and it takes a lot of effort for even a rather trained listener like myself to listen to the album as a whole more than once in an afternoon, I mean, with one's concentration full-on to the music, you know! Some (calmer) passages are a less intricate (in a complexity per time ratio – just joking), and aid to digest the whole, but overall the head-banger is very little repose! As more contemporary influences, the band cites the bands Between the Buried And Me, Animals as Leaders, Tesseract, and Circle Of Contempt.
For your dose of Yantra music, check the “music” (the 3 songs off EP) and “video” section at (www.) yantrametal.com (you know, there's also an Alternative Folk project from Norway, and an a'capella vocal trio from London, both going under the same bandname). Via the “portal” section, you can link to the band's pages on facebook, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and ReverbNation, but none of these will give you extra audio or video material. At the moment, I remain somewhat confused about the band's intentions, where the music is concerned, because occasionally it seems like the melody side of the music is secondary to the complexity the musicians can bring in. Still, overall this IS a very nice instrumental album, and there's a good chance you'll be able to see the guys in a place near you...if you're from the Massachusetts area of the globe, that is, for with the addition of the live bassist the band intends to go out on tours. And the guys are already planning for the future, writing new material for a second full-length!