Album Review: The Algorithm – Brute Force: Overclock

By Tobias Dexter on December 19, 2016

Sometimes musicians find themselves being trapped in a precarious situation where they write songs they really like but these don’t seem to fit the overall album concept. As limitless as The Algorithm’s music is, Rémi Gallego found himself being limited. But he created a ladder out of this wormhole using the DLC (downloadable content) concept well known in the computer games genre. With Brute Force: Overclock he presents us the „dark and warm corners“ of his full length album Brute Force which was released April 2016.

The brute force method in general represents a trial and error technique in the fields of computer sciences and cryptography. Here all answers and passwords are tested to find the solution to an explicit question or the encoding of a encrypted document. And if you try to imagine how this constant attacking would sound like, you will get the music that The Algorithm produce. A hard-beating bass underlines chaotic but systematic synthesizer melodies, brutal guitar riffs and drum tracks that will help you to break your neck. Shredded guitar riffs will be followed by sound elements that sound like your computer froze for a breakdown.

Brute Force: Overclock starts off with „Idle“ which represents the dark side of The Algorithm which somehow reminds me of Wintersun. Black Metal-ish guitar riffs and drums combined with arpeggio synthesizers are followed by a djent breakdowns that will „brute“ force you to bang your head. A rather short melodic interlude will help you to dissolve your brain in the next – again very brutal – breakdown. „Overclock“ is another fast track with a brutal techno beat in the beginning. Spheric elements followed by head cracking rhythms, interludes that will make us feel lost in space are followed by kind of easy techno elements with a drum and bass sound that kick right where it needs to kick. The third track seems to be rather slow one but rises using a death metal composition. Brutal, stampeding riffs and a fast off-beat takes us by the hand and initializes a circle pit in our head which is followed by another brutal breakdown. This song is a surprise from beginning to the end where another dark passage reminds us of old-school black metal. Concluding this DLC is „Floating Point“ remixed by Drumcorps and I would rather not try to explain this madness that has been created here.

I was able to ask Rémi Gallego some questions concerning his new DLC Brute Force: Overclock.

Prog Sphere: Do you think that the DLC concept can be a real alternative for the whole music genre to exploit an album atmosphere? In other words: In your opinion should more bands publish a DLC to a full length album?

Rémi Gallego: I don’t know if more bands should do it, but I know that I enjoy doing it. It allowed me to explore the style of an album further and bring some new tracks without having to start a new concept all over again. Logistically, you can release it only digitally and don’t have to invest so much in CD pressing. That makes it a nice and cool way to make use of the hype of a full-length.

Prog Sphere: Concerning live gigs and concerts: Will you handle these songs as they were published on a „normal“ album? Or do you feel these songs being more separated from the ones you chose for The Algorithm’s live experience?

Rémi Gallego: I don’t necessarily see any songs as separated anymore. Every song makes the project what it is, but deciding which track is gonna make it live is sometimes more of a technical choice than it is of a artistic decision. We always try to push the limit of what we’re capable of doing live, and right now every song on the DLC could potentially make it, but we have to work and try to find interesting way to play them. Time will tell.

You seem to be a fan of DLCs. Which computer game DLC is your favorite and why? Did you came across some parallels compared to this specific DLC and its original game while creating Brute Force: Overclock?

Rémi Gallego: I love the concept of DLCs. Back in the day, we had “add-ons” or “extension packs” or whatever they were called. DLCs seem to have a bad reputation because most games charge a lot just to bring some new useless skins or trading cards. Worse, some charge full price for the original game and kinda force you to buy DLCs to have the full experience. That’s not the spirit. The Skyrim DLCs are actually really good as they actually bring a lot more content to the table, but it never feels like the original game was missing something just to make you buy this extension.

That’s the mindset I try to have with music; it has to bring something different enough, but you don’t need to buy or even listen to it to understand the Brute Force concept. Actually you could just stream it, so that makes it a totally different experience than games anyway.

All in all Brute Force: Overclock is a perfect produced addition to the full-length album and is really worth spending some bucks to see what other elements The Algorithm are capable of to create. This DLC compared to its full-length record shows us more dark and light passages that expend our understanding of Rémi Gallego’s song-writing and composition.

Tracklist: