Reviewing The Living Measure of Time by Jurojin

Rating: 7/10

If I had a nickel for every time a progressive metal band released a particularly interesting debut album in the mid-2010s and then vanished forevermore, I’d have three nickels — which isn’t a lot, but it is weird that it’s happened thrice now ¹.

The Living Measure of Time is fairly short for a prog metal album (only 30 minutes), with a sound that’s reminescent of Tool and System of a Down (probably because the vocalist, James Alper, sounds a lot like SoaD’s Serj Tankian). I discovered this album when its final track, “The Dreaming”, popped up on my Spotify daylist a few days ago.

What really caught my eye (or ear, I guess) is that two tracks — “Proem” and “The Equinox” — feature the tabla, which is quite rare in metal. According to Wikipedia, they occasionally performed acoustic-only shows featuring the instrument, and their musical style, too, seems to be at least somewhat influenced by Indian classical music. Neat.

If you only listen to the first few tracks on the album, you might be fooled into thinking it’s quite standard fare as far as metal goes — “Ingress” is a nice, albeit very predictable slow-buildup, all-acoustic type of opening, and “The Scars” and “The Liar” aren’t particularly prog-y, nor do they feature more uncommon musical influences or instrumentation.

It gets a lot better after “Proem”, particularly towards the end — “The Equinox” and “The Dreaming” are my two favourite tracks from here; the latter (I’ve listened to it too many times this week) has some very pleasing bass parts and a hopeful sound unlike the rest of the album, which is darker and more haunting. Unfortunately, Jurojin disbanded nearly a decade ago, so we’ll probably never hear another piece of music from them with a similar sound 😔.