by Eduardo RivadaviaSilly title notwithstanding, Lethargy's only studio album, It's Hard to Write with a Little Hand, helped elevate heavy metal to unprecedented serious music status, its labyrinthine sonic contortions paving the way for what would later become recognized as the math-metal movement. Get your calculators out, because today's lesson will be a difficult one: first track Careborne begins with a mock country music intro, but quickly sets about introducing the group's ever-twisting instrumental interplay, which, when topped with Erik Burke's furious screaming, may sound to some like King Crimson forced through an extreme metal meat grinder. The music of Floridian death-jazz greats Atheist is another appropriate and inevitable comparison, but even though the repeated use of brief introductory snippets of dialog throughout (Humor Me, Spill, Erased, etc.) also point to contemporary purveyors of the weird Today Is the Day, it's entirely arguable that Lethargy came up with that idea first. Plus, when it comes to creations of such textural density, imitation is a non-applicable term. Nearing the end of the frenzied ride, Thread and the unusually lengthy Medley are the only tracks containing momentary examples of what one might call conventional rock structures and standard rhythms (otherwise it's absolute madness), and final cut Humorless provides an unexpected departure into industrial sounds and loops that resemble Godflesh or Front Line Assembly. In the end, the only serious problem with all this is that the student -- or rather, listener -- could very well accuse Lethargy of composing mathematical proofs, not music, and who's to say they're wrong? Entertainment certainly becomes a sketchy definition under these circumstances, so perhaps it is best to approach this record as one might approach the decoding of James Joyce's Ulysses -- be brave and good luck.