Style: Extreme metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: Rage, violence, silliness
Thoughts: Devin is an interesting individual. I could be remembering this incorrectly but I seem to remember that Physicist was created because he didn't want to create another SYL album for Century Media at the time. This was supposed to fill that gap, Jed, Byron and Gene were all on board as well.
Now wither or not this album meets the standards of SYL is up for debate. For me it's different enough that it can be seen as adjacent to SYL, but it's not similar enough to be called the third Strapping album. Physicist is not nearly as technical or as filled with unbridled rage as City.
In fact if anything this is a rather light hearted album. A lot of the riffs on here are almost playful in nature with riffs ranging from copying the Superman theme (Material), to being almost downright happy (Jupiter), to mimicking video game music (Irish Maiden sounds like a Turtles in Time track). The original version of Kingdom is here as well, this would be rerecorded for Epicloud at a much later date.
Of course there are songs on here that are absolute insanity as well. Death, Devoid and Victim are all scorchers that rival the intensity of SYL. The odd ball on the album though is Planet Rain. This is a 10+ minute epic that goes through several different movements before settling into a silent rainfall for the end of the album. It's loud, it's long and it's kinda an odd edition to the album, not sure it fits with the rest of the songs on here.
Physicist is kind of the odd ball release of Devin's early works. It's not a bad album by any means, its just a strange one. The craziness of Infinity is carried over a bit and mixed with a pinch of SYL to produce a wacky and somewhat cooky rage filled album. It's a fun listen but not nearly as good as the other entries into the Era boxed set.
Written February 5th 2024
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