The Algorithm is the musical project of French musician Rémi Gallego (born 7 October 1989) from
Perpignan
Perpignan (, , ; ca, Perpinyà ; es, Perpiñán ; it, Perpignano ) is the prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France, in the heart of the plain of Roussillon, at the foot of the Pyrenees a few kilometres from the ...
. His style is characterised by an unusual combination of
electronic dance music with
progressive metal
Progressive metal (sometimes shortened to prog metal) is a broad fusion music genre melding heavy metal and progressive rock, combining the loud "aggression" and amplified guitar-driven sound of the former with the more experimental, cerebral ...
. Gallego chose the name The Algorithm to highlight the music's complex and electronic nature.
History
Early years (2009–2010)
After the demise of his band Dying Breath, Rémi Gallego decided in 2009 to look for potential members for a band that focused on
mathcore
Mathcore is a subgenre of hardcore punk and metalcore influenced by post-hardcore, extreme metal and math rock that developed during the 1990s. Bands in the genre emphasize complex and fluctuant rhythms through the use of irregular time signatur ...
, which came as an inspiration from
The Dillinger Escape Plan
The Dillinger Escape Plan was an American metalcore band. The band was formed in 1997 in Morris Plains, New Jersey by guitarist Ben Weinman, bassist Adam Doll, vocalist Dimitri Minakakis, and drummer Chris Pennie. The band's use of odd time sign ...
. After a futile search for new members, with the help of his
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected string ...
and a
DAW, Gallego began to produce his own music.
In December 2009 and July 2010, he published the two demos "The Doppler Effect" and "CRITICAL.ERROR", which were / released via his own website for free download. Towards the end of 2010, he announced that he was working on a new EP named "Identity" (it was never completed). Also, he was preparing for his first live appearances.
First live shows (2011)

In August 2011, The Algorithm released his compilation called ''Method_'' on which the songs from his two previous demos were compiled which were also for free download. An appearance followed in October 2011 at the
Euroblast Festival
The Euroblast Festival is a heavy metal music rock festival, festival taking place in Cologne, Germany since 2008. The festival was initiated by close friends John Giulio Sprich and Daniel Schneider.
Background
The Euroblast Festival, alongsi ...
in
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
, where The Algorithm featured alongside bands such as
Textures,
TesseracT
In geometry, a tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of ei ...
and
Vildhjarta
Vildhjarta is a Swedish progressive metal band from Hudiksvall, formed in 2005. The band plays in a Meshuggah-influenced musical style employing heavily down-tuned seven-string guitars, as well as harmonic minor chord progressions, jarring stacc ...
.
A month later Mike Malyan, drummer for the band
Monuments
A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, his ...
, uploaded a drum cover of the song "Isometry" on
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...
. After seeing this, Gallego was convinced that it would be possible to play his songs on a real drum set and Malyan was presented as an accompaniment during live performances.
[Interview with Rémi Gallego on mwdreviews.com](_blank)
accessed on 9 February 2013.
In the same month, The Algorithm signed a record deal with the British label
Basick Records.
Signing to Basick Records and ''Polymorphic Code'' (2012–2013)
In January 2012, The Algorithm released the single "Tr0jans" via
Basick Records, which was only available digitally. It was followed by appearances in festivals such as Djentival in
Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the German States of Germany, state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital o ...
,
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
, as well as on the UK Tech-Metal Fest held in
Alton,
UK, where he joined the release in addition to including
Uneven Structure
Uneven Structure is a progressive metal band based in Metz, France. They play a style of post-metal which is heavily influenced by the Swedish extreme metal band Meshuggah. The band blends polyrhythmic passages and extremely low tunings with a he ...
and
Chimp Spanner
Paul Antonio Ortiz is an English multi-instrumentalist, best known for his work under the pseudonym, or solo project, of Chimp Spanner. He recorded, produced, mixed and mastered in his home studio, both the 2005 album ''Imperium Vorago'' and 20 ...
appearances. On 19 November 2012 the debut album ''Polymorphic Code'' was released via
Basick Records, which included seven previously unreleased songs as well as the song "Tr0jans".
In January 2013, The Algorithm played alongside
Enter Shikari
Enter Shikari (stylised as enter: shikari and occasionally as ΣΠΤΣ℞ SΗΦΚ∆℞Φ) are a British rock band formed in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England in 1999 by bassist Chris Batten, lead vocalist and keyboardist Rou Reynolds, and dru ...
and
Cancer Bats
Cancer Bats is a Canadian hardcore punk band from Toronto, Ontario. To date, they have released seven studio albums and six extended plays; with their most recent LP, ''Psychic Jailbreak'', having been released on 15 April 2022. The band is cur ...
at a concert in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...
. In April 2013, The Algorithm played their first live shows in the UK with a new live member, guitarist Max Michel. On 17 June 2013, The Algorithm was decorated on a
Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards
The following is a list of the ''Metal Hammer'' Golden Gods Awards winners.
Introduction
The awards were conceived by Chris Ingham, John O'Sullivan & Dave Bianchi, and first held at the Kentish Town Forum in London 2003. The show was owned by Fut ...
as the best underground artist of that year, decided by the votes of Metal Hammer readers. From September–October 2013, The Algorithm toured mainland Europe on the ''French Connection Tour'' with Uneven Structure and Weaksaw. However, Mike Malyan was not able to perform on this tour; Boris Le Gal of NeonFly filled in for him instead. The live line-up also performed on a UK tour with
Hacktivist
In Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism (a portmanteau of ''hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in hack ...
from November–December 2013.
''Octopus4'' and video games (2013–2014)
In December 2013, the band played a show in Paris with Uneven Structure, Kadinja and Cycles: a week afterwards, it was announced that Max Michel would no longer be performing with Rémi as he had been accepted into the
Berklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music is a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level cou ...
and could no longer tour regularly.
The Algorithm's second album, ''Octopus4'', was released on 2 June 2014. Along with the release of the album, a crowd funding campaign was launched for a video game named "RogueStar: Pirates VS Privateers" which features music composed by Rémi.
''Brute Force'' and ''Compiler Optimization Techniques'' (2016-present)
The third album,
''Brute Force'', was released on 1 April 2016 via the label
FiXT Music
FiXT (pronounced "fixed") is an American independent media company with several divisions including a record label, an online music store, and a film/TV/video game music licensing arm. FiXT was founded and is owned by Klayton, the sole member ...
.
In 2017, an extension named "Hacknet Labyrinths" was released for the video game
Hacknet, and features music composed by Rémi. The same year, Rémi released an EP titled "直線移動" under a new alias, ''Boucle Infinie''.
In 2018, The Algorithm released his fourth studio album, ''
Compiler Optimization Techniques''.
Style
The Algorithm melds several types of
electronic
Electronic may refer to:
*Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor
* ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal
*Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device
*Electronic co ...
and
electronic dance music with
progressive metal
Progressive metal (sometimes shortened to prog metal) is a broad fusion music genre melding heavy metal and progressive rock, combining the loud "aggression" and amplified guitar-driven sound of the former with the more experimental, cerebral ...
(including
djent
Djent () is a subgenre of progressive metal characterised by its use of off-beat and complex rhythm patterns. Its distinctive sound is that of high-gain, distorted, palm-muted, down-tuned strings. The name "djent" is an onomatopoeia of this s ...
and
mathcore
Mathcore is a subgenre of hardcore punk and metalcore influenced by post-hardcore, extreme metal and math rock that developed during the 1990s. Bands in the genre emphasize complex and fluctuant rhythms through the use of irregular time signatur ...
). For live performances Rémi Gallego uses an Akai APC40, a
MIDI controller
A MIDI controller is any hardware or software that generates and transmits Musical Instrument Digital Interface ( MIDI) data to MIDI-enabled devices, typically to trigger sounds and control parameters of an electronic music performance. They mo ...
produced by the company
Akai Professional
Akai ( ja, 赤井, ) is a Hong Kong manufacturer of consumer electronics. It was founded as Akai Electric Company Ltd in Tokyo, Japan, in 1946. Grande Holdings in Hong Kong purchased the Akai brand, and now distributes various electronic produc ...
, co-developed with the German company
Ableton
Ableton AG is a German music software company that produces and distributes the production and performance program Ableton Live and a collection of related instruments and sample libraries, as well as their own hardware controller Ableton Push. ...
, connected to a laptop running
Ableton Live
Ableton Live is a digital audio workstation for macOS and Windows developed by the German company Ableton. In contrast to many other software sequencers, Ableton Live is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool ...
.
In addition, a distorted female voice can be heard on almost all the releases, provided by Florent Latorre, a friend of Gallego's.
Members
* Rémi Gallego – production, electronics, guitars, bass
(2009–present)
;Session members
* Jean Ferry – live drums, electronic drums
(2013–present)
* Max Michel – live guitar
(2013)
* Mike Malyan – live drums
(2012–2014)
Discography
Studio albums
* ''
Polymorphic Code
In computing, polymorphic code is code that uses a polymorphic engine to mutate while keeping the original algorithm intact - that is, the ''code'' changes itself every time it runs, but the ''function'' of the code (its semantics) will not chang ...
'' (2012)
* ''
Octopus4
''Octopus4'' is the second studio album by French musical project the Algorithm. It was released on 2 June 2014 through Basick Records.
Track listing
Notes
* All track titles are stylised in lowercase, except for "ピタゴラスPythagoras", ...
'' (2014)
* ''
Brute Force
Brute Force or brute force may refer to:
Techniques
* Brute force method or proof by exhaustion, a method of mathematical proof
* Brute-force attack, a cryptanalytic attack
* Brute-force search, a computer problem-solving technique
People
* Brut ...
'' (2016)
* ''
Compiler Optimization Techniques'' (2018)
* ''
Data Renaissance
''Data Renaissance'' is the fifth studio album by French musical project the Algorithm. It was released on 3 June 2022 through FiXT.
Critical reception
Dom Lawson from Blabbermouth.net gave the album 7.5 out of 10 and said: "There are certain ...
'' (2022)
Compilations
* ''Method_'' (2011)
EPs
* ''Identity'' (2010)
* ''Brute Force: Overclock'' (2016)
* ''Brute Force: Source Code'' (2017)
Singles
* "Tr0jans" (2012)
* "Synthesiz3r" (2014)
* "Terminal" (2014)
* "Neotokyo" (2015)
* "Floating Point" (2016)
* "Rootkit" (2016)
* "Collapse" (2018)
* "People from the Dark Hill" (2020)
* "Among the Wolves" (2021)
* "Protocols" (2021)
* "Interrupt Handler" (2021)
* "Object Resurrection" (2022)
Demos
* ''The Doppler Effect'' (2009)
* ''Critical Error'' (2010)
References
External links
Official siteThe Algorithmat
Myspace
The Algorithmat
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Algorithm
French electronic musicians
Musical groups established in 2009
Musicians from Toulouse
2009 establishments in France