Car Bomb have long been contenders for the title of world’s most rhythmically baffling metal band, but on Tiles Whispers Dreams they refine that chaos into something punchier, tighter, and almost catchy. Almost. They haven’t softened, this is still 12 minutes of dizzying time signature shifts, alien guitar tones, and vocals that rip the back of the throat, but there’s a focus to this EP that makes it one of their most effective works to date.

Car Bomb are one of the only bands who can take influence from Meshuggah without sounding like a watered-down version, and here they go further, adding smeared Deftones-esque chords with warped pitch bends, and whiplash tempo shifts that evoke the sound of a vehicle shifting gears. On Blindsides the band blends divebomb guitars, percussive blasts, and brief moments of syncopated groove that are gone before your brain can locate the downbeat, while Paroxysm opens with a rhythm so baffling it’s uncountable. There are fleeting moments of recognisable structure and headbangable grooves, but just when you lock into them, they vanish like hallucinations. This is music that wants to run you over, then reverse back over you whilst screaming “figure it out!”. About 90 seconds into the final track the groove lands just long enough to give you a moment of relief, and then veers off into another impossibly intricate phrase that accelerates, only to be repeated slower in its dying seconds, as if the band are giving you one final chance to make sense of their music before they disappear. Tiles Whispers Dreams is ridiculously fun because it’s impossible to predict. Every sound and phrase confounds expectation. Car Bomb have carved out a completely singular sound over the years, and this EP sees them refining it with gleeful precision. A 12-minute blast of brain-scrambling noise that will wear you out but keep you grinning the whole time. Surrender to the chaos and let it pummel you.