April 24, 2010 • self-released
Maybe it's a sign that I am getting too much into sludge/post-rock when I'm finding random possibly-demo EPs by completely unheard-of bands just to check them out. Well, someone has to do it, I suppose, and today that someone is me. Unfortunately the results of my findings are not always terribly good.
The band's sound is pretty generic, consisting of echoing clean guitars and subdued or tribal drumming, both shambling aimlessly until they launch into a more traditional sludgy groove. It's something I've heard done a thousand times, and unfortunately here it isn't done particularly well. While the riffs aren't bad, the songs themselves are incredibly repetitive, repeating the same thing over and over for the entire song, just with a different drum beat or with distortion added.
Speaking of distortion, I know that this is a bit of an amateur work but damn does that guitar sound bad. The clean parts are decent, but the distortion on the guitar sounds like a vacuum cleaner running in the next room. Not only is it tinny and formless, but it isn't ever any louder than the clean guitar, making the "heavy" parts of the songs not heavy at all. It's kind of a shame becase the actual playing isn't bad—that includes the vocals and drums too—but the end result is sonically empty and unengaging.
I am probably ripping on this EP too much. It's a start, let's say. The band needs some more original ideas but it's possible they could take off at some point. In the meantime, though, this EP isn't really for anyone but the band themselves.
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