Shardik

Matt Hollenberg has been described, more than once, as half-man, half-guitar, and his hyperkinetic playing in assorted heavy metal, prog-rock, and ambient contexts and mixtures certainly justifies such laurels. He is, for instance, a longtime collaborator to John Zorn, having played on multiple Simulacrum albums and recording a set of the prolific and exuberant composer’s Bagatelles with his dizzying extreme metal band Cleric. He was in the short-lived and much-loved supergroup John Frum, and his soundscape work reveals real depth of technique and restraint. But Hollenberg is not just a tactician or technician, as he made abundantly clear on Cruelty Bacchanal, his second album with his jazz-chamber-metal amalgamation Shardik. Composed amid the institutional downfall and apathy of the last decade and released in 2025, Cruelty Bacchanal uses dense, knotty, and aggressive math-metal to convey the meanness of our world—and, in spectacular fits and starts, push it away.

Hollenberg debuted Shardik with a self-titled album on Tzadik in 2017, its sophisticated passages of tech metal surrounded by surprising amounts of space and fusion flourishes that suggested time spent sitting by The Inner Mounting Flame. But for the second round, Hollenberg rebuilt the lineup, adding a rhythm section that includes Baroness bassist Nick Jost and busy New York drummer Danny Sher. He crucially recruited violinist Sana Nagano, a Berklee graduate steeped in classical and jazz traditions who absolutely shreds on acoustic and electric violin. She and Hollenberg push off each other, trading texture and melody, beauty and bedlam on riveting tracks with names like “Post-Earth Capitalist” and “Into the Mouth of the Great Nothing.” As complicated and labyrinthine as this music is, it is actually human, a gripping reflection of the times currently testing us.