MTVoid ‘Matters Knot’ Review: Tool bassist Justin Chancellor showcases eclectic sounds on sophomore album for project featuring vocalist Peter Mohamed. 

As fans know, things work slowly within the world of Tool. It took over a whopping 13 years between their last two albums.

It seems that this slow but sure pace also extends to the band member’s dalliances outside the band, including MTVoid, a project featuring Tool bassist Justin Chancellor and Sweet Noise frontman Peter Mohamed.

The duo first met at a musical festival in 2003, put out their first album, Nothing’s Matter in 2013, and are finally putting out it’s follow-up Matters Knot (Nov 10, Lobal Orning).

For anyone expecting something akin to Chancellor’s day job, Matters Knot is somewhat of a musical left turn-while there are elements of alt-metal here, there are also more avant-garde and esoteric dalliances that offer fresh new aural pathways.

First single MaBeLu is a case-in-point: featuring slinky funk bass, watery keyboards, skittering beats and distorted vocals, it features lyrics in English, Polish, and Arabic, and references Apocalypse Now, for a soundscape that is, as  Mohamed describes it  “like a soothing lullaby for a child witnessing tragedy, war, and the destruction of cities.” Heady stuff, indeed.

Opening tracks Death Survives features ominous bell chimes with robotic backing sounds, while Lilt -features Mohamed bellowing a disembodied wail followed by growled spoken world vocals over Chancellor’s rugged bass line.

Death Grips producer Andy Morin brings his corrosive, combative talents to Scanner Void, a tune replete with angular baselines, squealing synth, rolling drums and a staticky overlay that envelops the proceedings like an ominous fog.

Propagator is all pummeling beat and tunneling, clipped bass, with alternately soothing and disconcerting vocals, which gradually build into barked distorted industrial screams with Mohamed bellowing “7 million cores away!!!”

Drop Out takes another route, with a jazzy beat and careening bass, with guest vocals by Isabel Munoz-Newsome. Her soulful vocals espouse lyrics of ecological collapse and a rejection of the systems that got us to that point, along with an uncertainty and disquieting elation to the chaos.

The album concludes with Magmaficent, a tone poem marked by a slicing bass tone (Chancellor did it just one take) and spoken word reflections of relationships, family, and inner peace.

Matters Knot is a unique sonic odyssey by an electric musical duo, hard to classify, yet easy to digest once you attune to its unique frequency. The musically adventurous should take the plunge. One can only wonder what sonic witchery awaits for its sequel.