The weight of the world - Syzy

Syzy explodes into the bass music scene with an appropriately explosive riddim album.

Its capitalization annoys me very much, but despite the edgy branding, "The weight of the world" is the sledgehammer Syzy used to smash his way into the limelight of the bass music scene; a flurry of abrasive drops and melodic synths and a tracklist that sounds as if it had taken several kilos of strong illegal drugs before violently imploding. "The weight of the world" is an album that's poised to self-destruct right from the start, and whether that's production-wise or emotionally, I can't tell. Probably a bit of both—a generous helping of both. An appropriate mood for a breakthrough album, to be sure, and a mood that Syzy explores to the fullest throughout the 10 song tracklist. His debut project is overwhelmingly emotive and cathartic set of hard-hitting dubstep that treads a fine line between melodic and heavy. Perhaps that's what makes it so innovative—taking the basic elements of riddim, elements that have become increasingly stale on the big dubstep stages, and churning them up with melodic abrasiveness and personality. Because "The weight of the world" has character; it's a bold, bold project that doesn't fear experimentation and is brave enough to present a completely unorthodox take on bass music to the world. It's a project that strives for change, it's a project that wants—needs—to stand out, it's a project that does everything in its power to avoid any trope and make every turn away from the established standards of the scene. But it's also a project that expresses a level of emotion. Syzy pours his soul into these 10 tracks, and by some miracle, the tracks are still uncompromisingly intense, but now with the added flavour of sentiment. Quite frankly, it's a flavour I thoroughly appreciate, and to mix it into this chaos of an album is first-class production.

As innovative as it is, however, some of its elements range from a little boring to downright awful. Much like its tonality, "The weight of the world" is a rather polarizing project—whilst most of it is great fun, there are sections that drag out and it does have a weak structure holistically; oh, and "Get a grip!" almost singlehandedly ruined the entire project for me (particularly with its placement in the tracklist). And so whilst it's innovative and it's broken Syzy out of the underground, it's got some flaws that I just cannot overlook.