These East Coast crushers display all the hallmarks of both High On Fire’s shouty, sludgy, all-encompassing thrum and Saviours’ punk quirks and strong urge to break into galloping rhythms. It’s a hefty combination and one that deserves the good head-jerking that you will inevitably grant it. As is the case with both the aforementioned bands, Andy Martin’s wild vocals often gets a good smothering and as a consequence the lyrical content is often tough to pick out – I believe “I vs. The Glacier” has a peek-a-boo line that sounds like “Winners for years” or it could be “Witness four ears”. Your guess is as good as mine. It does however feature an enigmatic, visceral lead and a spot of downtime that wobbles and howls as it plays its psychedelic mind games.
“The Eagle” is pure riff; crushing, vitriolic and Neanderthal. It is the beast that will carve a mile-wide rut across your mind, whilst “Sandriders” thunders along at a fair lick, the vocals snapping at your heels, the drums’ reverberating thunder, the whole vehicle careering from side to side before slipping back into a swagger. “River Of Ice”, on the other hand, steadily chimes along a single chord, pulses like a heartbeat and features some neat, warbling cosmic touches. Every element, including that nagging underscore, all scream out Mastodon. These tracks are all hefty statements of intent; slaps of the glove across the cheeks of their peers.
Other highlights come in the form of the rock-a-saurus mosh of “I vs. The Glacier” and the much angrier blast of “Shadow Line”. This latter monster displays Bison B C’s tendency to stray mid-song – part-groove, part-braying, roaring insanity – it’s also the sound of Motorhead’s Lemmy being trampled underfoot. There’s the odd weak spot, glaringly the odd instrumental “Tower Of The Elephant II” (named “The Green Gods Of Yag” on this promo) which adds very little to the pile, but you couldn’t really accuse them of using it to pad out the album because of the variety of attack on offer.
Also, I haven’t seen an album with such an intriguing tracklist as this in a long time. Seriously, run your eyes down that list. Even before you’ve heard it you just know “Age Of Reptiles” is going to sound swampy, stompy and like its full of teeth (it does) and “Stealing The Ghost Horse” will undoubtedly get its blackened doom on (it does, in a Crowbar-y sort of way). All the song titles get the mind racing, conjuring enough images to demand further investigation. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to eventually get hold of a lyric sheet. All that remains to be said is… you’d better have your flamethrowers at the ready, folks. This is one mean opponent. I Versus The Glacier – Round One. Ding ding!
No comments:
Post a Comment