Islands – Islands

July 28, 2012 • self-released

With a name like Islands (and me reviewing it), really, what were you expecting besides more sludge metal? Their debut might be a little bit unoriginal, but it's still pretty impressive and chock full of good songs, showing that the genre isn't quite done yet.

Although, they could be trying to appeal to me specifically; after all there are a few similarities between several tracks on this album and your average Cult of Luna—similar guitar riffs, similar song structure, the same sort of beat-heavy pounding drums. Of course Islands does put their own spin on it; everything sounds a bit more abrasive than average, even the clean post-rockish stuff, both in production and in the way their music is played (like the vocals, especially raspy for this kind of music); I am liking the extra roughness, I've had enough squeaky-clean sludge production anyway. The post-rock sections are very reminiscent of mid-era Mogwai with steady rhythms and twinkly echoing guitars, but don't seem at all out of place. The transitions from one style to the other are well-done and sound very natural; see "Clouds Mistaken for Smoke", basically one long buildup but every step of it is justified with different textures and riffs.

The songwriting itself seems to be a bit hit-or-miss. Some tracks, like the opener, tend to be a bit repetitive and thus not terribly interesting; others are brilliantly written and/or catchy, like the second track "Hand Built View", which is packed full of awesome riffs, great buildups, and nicely contrasting textures; or the fast-paced "March"—probably the album highlight, incredibly catchy and awesome. Fortunately the album has more of the latter than the former, so it's not much of a complaint. Sometimes repetition isn't so much of a bad thing, anyway; technically "Clouds Mistaken for Smoke" is the same thing repeated over and over but it's difficult to notice as the way it's played changes so much.

I won't be surprised if a lot of people crap on Islands for putting out this kind of album in 2012—we've had enough post-rocky-sludge in the last decade, haven't we?—but if you're not sick to death of it yet, as I am not, Islands is a really good example of the genre. Sure, maybe they're doing nothing new, but they're polishing up what has come beforehand and doing a fine job at it. I'm pretty excited about this band and where they take it from here.

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