After playing for a few years in the "straight" music world as a member of the uniquely virtuosic Washington, D.C.-based metalcore band Reflux, seven- and eight-string guitar wizard Tosin Abasi was asked to record a solo album by the group's then-label, Prosthetic Records, once the group disbanded. At first, Abasi declined on the grounds that to do so would be "egotistical," but he eventually relented and founded a new entity named Animals as Leaders (inspired by Daniel Quinn's 1992 anthropocentric novel Ishmael) to function as this solo project. An eponymous debut album follo...