Having cast their chips onto the table from seemingly out of nowhere, PsyOpus prove to be betting men. They've studied their charts and calculated their odds and, having found results in their favor, opted to unleash aural devastation on all comers new and old. With cocky attitudes and unimaginable skills at hand, there's no escaping the fact that these four men wish to challenge the mighty forefathers of jazzy tech. metal. Judging from their Black Market Activities/Metal Blade Records debut, the weighty "Ideas of Reference", this quartet are well on their way to winning big.

It is a gamble that largely pays off, as the technical abilities of PsyOpus are simply undeniable. Their material is fierce and unforgiving, yet there comes a point where the band seem to abandon making songs in favor of displaying their staggering talents. When they're firing on all cylinders they concoct nearly perfect examples of tech. grind, most notably "The White Light" with its blissfully dissonant carousel of guitar and drum combinations. Elsewhere, "Imogen's Puzzle" is little more than stripped-down scale manipulation serving as an interlude, backed by samples of anguished screams and fire crackling. Moments like these are self-serving and detract from what could have been a seamless album. No matter how fascinating the band are at constructing unfathomable algorithms of noise, it is hard to consider "Ideas of Reference" a cohesive album. Yet it proves that the ideas here aren't just wishful daydreaming of metal-minded music collegiates, but instead reality.

Frankly put, this is an utterly exhausting album that more often than not chooses to redefine the extremes of heavy music rather than craft fully realized metal. The songs grow increasingly complicated and overwhelming; so much so that this outing could easily be used as a case study when writing a dissertation on mathematical reason and its relation to music theory. That is exactly the point though, as PsyOpus increase the volume of output and layer the songs with more virulent time signatures and polyrhythms the album becomes less a listenable pleasure than an aural assignment, one to be meticulously studied and analyzed. For fans of the style, "Ideas Of Reference" is perhaps the conversation piece of 2004, but for those unaccustomed to the form, PsyOpus' 'ideas' may prove as laboriously taxing as reading the encyclopedia from front to back.