Now it's a group of long-haired sludge-rockers from Vancouver. Their 4th album titled "Lovelessness" is another triumphant terrorizing doom romp. The album explores alternative textures as well as conventional doom and sludge subtexts, and sublty interjects a bit of hardcore on top!
1."An Old Friend"- The overlying harmony creates an atmosphere almost reminiscent of Fall of Troy, but quickly devolves into High on Fire territory with bombastic axe-cutting riffage. A twist on the Savannah-style sludge indeed. The piece features shouted, aggressive hardcore style vocals as well as 2 thick mid-rangey guitars panned hard left and right respectively. The drums are spaced whilst the bass is panned dead-center.
2."Anxiety Puke - Lovelessness"- Opening with a fast paced demonic punk feel and devolving into a total doom fiesta. It slams you with the maiden-style harmonies and HoF style battle axe riffs. Its length allows the track to fall into grandiose dissonant riffs before hitting into 6/8 death-march viciousness!
3. "Last and first things"- The cliched ambient noise followed by seriously aggressive doom riffs. The influence of that Savannah style can be heard once again with punctuated, tribal repetitive riffage.
4."Blood Music"- The longest track on the album. The track suffers from length do to quantity of riffs rather than truly expressing one elongated idea. It fluctuates between doom and sludge riffs, all of intense pounding quality, It does have a couple distinctive harmonized guitar lines however.
5. "Clozapine Dream"- The shortest track of the record. An emphasis on the 80s hardcore-style vocals is found. Quick, sludgy, and reminiscent of Kylesa.
6."Finally Asleep"- 70s doom meets 80s thrash. Nasty melodic lines mark the intro however, it devolves eventually into a pounding thrash rhythm the intro is recapitulated later. I cannot express further how epic the guitars intermingling on this track sounds.
Overall the record does not hold up to the prowess Bison launched with Dark Ages or Quiet Earth in terms of its innovation. The band does manage to make a solid and tight record, however, they should consider staying away with the more popular sludge convention. They really shine with their mastery of thrash incorporation, and should focus on exploiting their boundless energy.
Most boring shit I've ever heard.
ReplyDelete