Lye By Mistake was a jazz metal/mathcore outfit from St. Louis,
Missouri, formed some time in . They released their first album, a demo EP by the name of
“The Fabulous”, some time in . All of the tunes
from this demo would be re-recorded — along with three new tracks not on
the demo — for their debut full-length album, “Arrangements For
Fulminating Vective” (). The band
started recording demos for their next record around
– (these are listed here as “Fea Jur
Demos”), until the departure of vocalist Tony
Saputo. The band carried on, and released the new album as a totally
instrumental album “Fea Jur” in . The members of the band went their separate ways some time in , although there was never any official announcement of their
dissolution. The members of Lye By Mistake went by a wide variety of
(typically goofy) nicknames, which are not necessarily reflected by the member
listing here.
While Lye By Mistake’s music had plenty of constants throughout
their career, it is useful to divide it into two eras: that of
“Arrangements For Fulminating Vective”, and that of “Fea
Jur”. For many listeners, the most obvious difference will be the lack of
vocals in the latter album, versus the fairly prominent mathcore vocals in the former. But the “Fea Jur
Demos” give us a decent idea of what “Fea Jur” would have
sounded like, had their vocalist not left the band — and
still, the differences between “Arrangements” and “Fea
Jur” are very clear. “Arrangements” displays clear influence
from New Jerseymathcore pioneers The Dillinger Escape Plan
(particularly “Calculating Infinity” ()), and perhaps also from grindiermathcore acts (read: whitebelt) like early
Daughters — or even The Locust, considering the
experimentation with synthesizers (and later, theremin). As a result, “Arrangements” is
characterised by through-composition, aimless
chromatic runs, rhythmic low-end stabs from the guitars, and perhaps most importantly, the incomplete
assimilation of jazz influences with the overall mathcore approach. Another good point of reference here is
Between the Buried and Me — although Lye By Mistake lacked
the death metal/deathcore origins of
BtBaM, both “Arrangements” and BtBaM’s
pre-“Parallax” material share the tendency to place contrasting
genres/styles directly next to each other for the sake of contrast,
rather than for compositional reasons — usually with little in the way of
transitioning. As a result, if what you were looking for was jazz metal proper, you will likely be disappointed with
“Arrangements” (except perhaps with the latter bit of
“Nero’s Intention”…), even if it is technically metal music with jazz influences.
On the other hand, “Fea Jur” (and the “Fea Jur Demos”)
represents the much further maturation of this jazz metal
approach into something that one could be proud to call “jazz metal”. Indeed, “Fea Jur” is one of the
finest attempts at such a fusion that I know of, and comes highly recommended
to all fans of metal and to all fans of jazz. “Fea Jur” really is a more
metallic form of jazz fusion, retaining
its mathcore origins through the use of often rhythmically
unsettling riffing and hyperactive drumming, even if it has
lost one of the primary instruments of mathcore: the human voice. Humourously, the same thing occurs on
RYM with Lye By
Mistake as with Dysrhythmia: because of the
instrumental nature of “Fea Jur”, it is marked as a math rock album! And to think that all a mathcore band has to do to be math rock is
lose their vocalist… and that all math rock with
unclean vocals is not really math rock
after all! In all seriousness, “Fea Jur” has little, if any, math rock influence; a safer bet for a diplomatic genre
labeling is progressive metal and/or brutal prog.
notes on the distributions
“Frozen Mandibles” from the “Fea Jur Demos” was renamed
to “Stag” before being released as part of “Fea Jur”.
![liner notes [1]](arrangements-liner-notes-1.jpg){kind=link}
