Pick of the month:
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST - "Life's Hateful Seed"
I have recently been dabbling in some sounds from the so-called post rock genre of bands like MOGWAI and GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPORER! Their soundscapes can be quite intriguing, and if you are in the right mood, quite mind blowing. SNOWBLOOD is similar to a metal version of these post rock bands. They have an obvious influence from NEUROSIS, the leader of the experimental / art metal bands, as well as like-minded bands ISIS and PELICAN. Anyway enough name-dropping, “Being and becoming” is easily good enough to stand in its own right.
The album seamlessly drifts from dreamlike moments of floating on clouds whilst being fanned and fed grapes by topless women (or Adonis-like men if that is what you prefer) to moments of sheer brutality as those clouds turn into some sort of fiery abyss and the fanners attempt to rip your arms off. On the whole, this album does contain more ambient floating than heavy put-hairs-on-your-chest moments.
The musicianship is definitely up to scratch. The vocals range from a hippy kind of drone to a brutal death shriek. The guitar work, especially the heavy moments, pounds and bludgeons straight out of the NEUROSIS 101 textbook. The lengths of the songs are, like most other bands in this genre, quite lengthy. “Black Stars Over Glasgow” the longest song on the album clocks in just under 17 minutes. The first 10 minutes are an ambient buildup to the doomy, climatic ending. The lengthy intro did lose me a little, but NEUROSIS at times does the same thing, so I guess I should not be too critical. I do feel that the while the production is good it could have been beefed up a bit, perhaps with a bit more fullness to give the heavy moments more of an apocalyptic punch.
To sum up, I do like this album a lot. I have heard very similar things before, but SNOWBLOOD add enough of their own twists and turns (listen to "Year of the Bastard") to keep things sounding fresh and interesting. They are definitely the best thing that I have heard coming out of Scotland for a long time.
OFFICIAL SITE: www.snowblood.com
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