Leaves – Serpent

January 11, 2013 • self-released

When it comes to basement bands made by a couple of brothers making experimental music and having a bit too much fun doing it, it's easy to be skeptical—I've released a couple crappy albums myself that way. But I have to say that Leaves was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Sure, it sounds amateur and maybe a bit silly, but dig a little and it turns out to be actually a pretty interesting album.

Leaves' sound is off somewhere in the vague vicinity of black and death metal, with some industrial and grindcore thrown in for good measure. It's hard to pinpoint because the music is pretty unusual stuff, compositionally; there's some tremolo picking, some chugging, some doomy stuff, it's all over. It's pretty good, though, albeit a bit hard to get into the first listen or two. The use of distorted bass guitar is the best part, as the dubbed lines have a great harmonic grind sound to them that usually doesn't get too messy and unpleasant like a lot of lo-fi grind can. The vocals are interesting in that they are more of a punk style than a metal one—they're mostly comprehensible due to their shouted rather than screamed nature. They fit well, though they can be a bit tough to hear and aren't terribly consistent.

I would love this a lot more, though, if it weren't for the percussion. It can be really tough to create a good drum sound if you don't have an actual drummer (and I know better than anyone), but the way that sampling was used to create the drums here doesn't do it for me at all. The most prominent sound, an obnoxious click track of some sort, sticks out of the mix and almost drowns everyone else out. The rest of the drums are muffled in the background, making it sometimes difficult to get into the songs' rhythms. I can see this sort of sampled approach working out, but not with this particular choice of sounds.

Anyway I don't want to stay negative, because Serpent shows a lot of promise. Some polish, some tweaks to the production (a little reverb to add some fullness wouldn't hurt), some new drums, and I'd be thrilled. Meanwhile, this is a great debut, for what it's worth.

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