After the release of their debut full-length last year, Intronaut return with an EP containing three new songs and some added bells and whistles. The Challenger kicks off with the title-track and the members of Intronaut pick up where they previously left off with a fairly straight-forward display of metal, oftentimes reminiscent of High on Fire. "Whittler of Fortune" sees the band branching out, while still prominently featuring technical metal, they also add in aspects of drone metal, jazz, and post-rock. "Deep Architecture" further delves into the dynamic mixture of metal and jazz.
The EP is tacked on with five lives tracks recorded from the past couple of years of the band's existence. I'm not big on live albums, let alone adding on random songs to add length. There is also a remix of the song "Burning These Days." This is a little better than the live songs, but still not anything worth mentioning beyond its presence here. I would have rather the band spent more time writing and given us more new material than these extras.
Intronaut shows signs of brilliance with their new material, but the extras are dead weight. I wasn't a big fan of their previous number, but the direction they are taking here will have me at least check out what they offer next - it could be really good.
