Avatar

AVATAR returns in 2020 with a bold manifesto called Hunter Gatherer. The band’s eighth album is an unflinchingly ruthless study of a clueless humankind’s ever-increasing velocity into an uncertain future, furthering the reach of the band’s always expanding dark roots. Songs like “A Secret Door,” “Colossus,” and “Silence In The Age of Apes” are ready-made anthems for the modern age, each struggling for a collective meaning amidst the savagery of technology.

Theatrics in heavy metal seem to roll in and out with the tide. In the '80s, it was almost an expectation for bands to give listeners an over the top experience that mashes together both their music and their stage show for an over the top experience. As time went on, bands began to pay less attention to the appearance side of things, and show up onstage looking little different than the people in the audience. It’s a good gesture generally, with all people in the room being equal, but many still want a heightened sense of reality that metal can bring. It’s the mission statement of Avatar to do so.

As the career of Gonzalo Rubalcaba has progressed, through the trials and tribulations of attempting to move freely from his native Cuba to the U.S. and back, there has never been any doubt as to his monstrous talent. Easily a Top Five pianist in terms of his fleet-fingered ability to stretch the parameters of jazz and Latin musics, he has chosen in recent years to play solo or in trios. Avatar changes that with a long-awaited small-ensemble date, featuring a fellow heavyweight, the saxophonist and composer Yosvany Terry, and the brilliant young drummer Marcus Gilmore. As if Rubalcaba needs any fuse to be lit – he has that self-contained – Terry and Gilmore really set sparks flying in this power-packed set of progressive original music.