Numb – Numb

March 1, 2011 • self-released

Numb is yet another crust punk / sludge fusion sort of band, a style I haven't gotten tired of yet although its days in my library's rotation may be numbered. The band calls their self-titled debut an EP, but to me if feels a lot more like a full album; though its quality is consistent throughout, I'm not finding a lot of replay value in it.

The sound is right up my alley, though: lots of heavy, sludgy riffing with deep death metal vocals, contrasted with faster sections that verge into grindcore territory with blasting and angular guitar lines, in addition to some more straightforward crust punk in between. It's something I've heard a lot and written about before, but every band seems to do it slightly differently. Numb seems to prefer switching back and forth rapidly, and it works pretty well in keeping the listener on their toes, not to mention the slightly jazzy flair that crops up now and again—see the beginning of "Cower", for example—that reminds me slightly of Le Scrawl. It's pretty neat.

"Pretty neat" is about as far as I'll allow it, though. Superficially I'm enjoying Numb quite a bit, but this release gets a bit tough to listen to. Each track is basically the same thing, and half an hour is pretty long (at least by punk standards) so listening to the whole thing becomes tedious and I feel like it should have been about half as long. Maybe I just have a shorter attention span for this kind of stuff than I used to, I dunno.

Still, it's not bad. I like where Numb is going and I'll probably keep an eye on them to see if they can put out anything a little more focused and varied. In the meantime this is solid, especially for a debut, so even if it's not necessarily my thing I'm sure plenty of fans of this style can get into it.

5