When everything is stripped away, all the shine, polish,
layered falsities of the things that are shown to us, all that is left is raw,
unadulterated aggression; art in its truest form. At first it can be something
which is harsh to experience, a truth which we have been “protected” from
without our knowledge, therefore it can be an alien sound when first heard, but
it is something which is always lingering, there at the start as at the end.
Such a sound of purism is a rare thing to find, but with sludge
experimentalists Doormats, it’s essential nuts and bolts kind of stuff.
The three-piece from Bainbridge Island, Washington (US)
carry a sound in its earliest stages of passion and originality. The raw
unfiltered out-pouring of the vocals on their debut Mounds teeter on the verge
of spoken word earthly sounds filled with gut wrenching passion, not too
dissimilar from post-hardcore group The Saddest Landscape. It’s a construct of
stripped down brutality that is echoed throughout the record hidden in the
depths of the riffs, the heavy suffocating bass lines and the
death-knocking-at-your-door drumming.
The title track for instance begins with nightmarish
experimentalist vocals that clear the room before the sludge/doom covering of
riffs cut you like a blunt spade, before ripping into stoner jams. It raises the hair on the back of your spine. Doormats is a band that keep you
guessing at all times, never letting you settle into a sense of comfort with
their songs, filling every void with a sense of meaning, pouring their sludge
into every orifice.
Doormats could turn into influential players in the sludge
field, but for now, they’re taking us all back to the prehistoric days of
noise; time to drag your knuckles and grunt along with them.
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