Press play on Orme’s newest EP No Serpents, No Saviours, and out blasts crematorium-temperature heat. The self-professed “world’s slowest band” pulverize, scorch, and grind the world and listener’s ears on this the single-track, multi-movement release that clocks in at just over twenty-four minutes. Orme call their album “challenging”, but it is worth every crushing minute. No Serpents, No Saviours can be divided into three sections: the first six minutes, then minute six to sixteen, and sixteen to close. Section one begins with the end as it finds humankind in agony, disowned by God as a result of their total ignorance and inhumanity. It is slow, ferocious, and unyielding as a steamroller. The incinerator has begun turning its fodder to ash, but this cremator has not even fully preheated.
Sibilant whispers bring a new depth of sound in the second section. Chaotic, desperate noise scratches the eardrums as the pressure grows. Blackened landscape settles into its new reality. Walls of noise perish and give way to a single plodding drumbeat as section two draws to a close. As if a great apocalyptic beast treads the land, the thumping drumbeat tramples and grinds before it everything that remains. The voice of Prospero from The Masque of the Red Death intones the present scene: there is nothing but “famine, war, pestilence, disease and death”. If hell is the absence of God, then Orme provide the soundtrack for damnation. As the final section draws to a close, guitarist Tom Clements solos while Rome burns. The psychedelic wailing rings halfway between a celebration for the death of man and a lament of terrible loss. It is up to the Earth and God whether they will rebuild.
No Serpents, No Saviours is challenging, not because of its length but because it is so desolate. It is not crushing like the beautiful depths of the ocean; it crushes with an atomic blast of heat and destruction. Orme’s 2024 chunk of death-doom is a powerful listen, with just the right mix of Jimmy Long’s droning, twisting bass; Clements’ screeching guitars and tortured vocals; and Luke Thelin’s lumbering, powerful drums. They’ve cranked the heat to annihilating, and fans of death-doom would be remiss to miss searing their faces staring into Orme’s vision of cataclysm.
“Make sludge grim again.” If ever there was a slogan to hang your hat on, especially one that speaks to the dark grinding nature of sludge metal, then this one would be it. Kurokuma (that band from the YouTube docuseries about getting stoned and touring in Japan) bring their latest offering the rolling tray, and it’s a rip roaring exploration through genre bending sludge metal and beyond.
Kurokuma have chosen the massively dense concept of ‘time’ to base this album around, which only adds to the gravitas of the complete piece. Throughout the album the theme of infinite time (sand) is juxtaposed with that of the frozen moment (amber), this is reflected on the cover art, an mantis frozen in stasis inside a lump of amber.
Governments promise a lot and too many times deliver very little, especially when it comes to the north of England, too often it is forgotten for our capital. But in this neglect the greatest art is formed, adversity crafting our greatest minds and art to stand the test of time. Step forward Barbarian Hermit. The five piece sludge and groove messiahs of Manchester, returning with original vocalist Simon Scarlett for their sophomore album and there is no slump in sight.
Bolting out the gate with title track and lead single ‘Mean Sugar’ is a haymaker with an infectious melody design to rattle round the brain for years to come. It’s a tremendous celebration of everything Barbarian Hermit does so well with stadium sized stoner and groove metal with psychedelic and hard rock flourishes commanding maximum engagement. The confidence and mastery of the these musical fibres allows such vibrant northern personality of every note to radiate, setting them on a course for the peak of groove mountain. Although 2018s Solitude and Savagery is a tremendous album and previous vocalist Ed Campbell was a mammoth presence but the return of Simon Scarlett brings a completeness to the formula. The emphatic ‘Battle of Kompromat’ is an elephant stampede of groove with Scarletts signature croons and a riff armada from guitarist Adam Robertshaw marching throughout. The deliciously northern ‘Who Put 50p in You?’ is emblematic of the albums personality, a hearty tribute to the tough and character building corners of northern England in the language of riff and groove.
The group’s seventh LP, Megafauna is an ode to home for the Northern Ireland post-rockers; a lockdown-spurred tribute to the places and people that raised them, supported them and grown with them across the almost two decades the band have been active. A “distilled moniker for our peers”, as the band themselves cite.
Such a statement may be misleading though. Megafauna is not a cold and calculated merger of the motifs that underpinned their previous works. Nor is it a lazy, half-cocked recollection of their previous records – this isn’t the post rock equivalent of clip show episodes of The Simpsons. What it is however, is a brilliant retrospective look on both their career thus far and the journey they’ve travelled as creatives and people. Above all else, it’s a bridge between their once giddy youth and their matured current standing as one of the best names in the genre, a moniker ASIWYFA uphold here brilliantly.
Kicking into life with the rowdy, rough and playful ‘North Coast Megafauna’, here, ASIWYFA return to the horseplay of their debut self-titled albeit with the delicate finesse that can only come from almost 20 years in the game. As noodling riffs roughhouse with bouncy, rubbery bass and the wrestling walls of distortion that have come to become to characterise this band following the release of 2017’s The Endless Shimmering, this blanketing sentiment gets established from the offset. The immediately proceeding ‘Do Mór’, with it scaling wild, wind-swept rock soundscapes with mischievous jazz syncopation in a way that mirrors the rugged Northern Ireland coastline the band calls home, only emphasises this.
But as stated, the brilliance of Megafauna doesn’t lie with ASIWYFA reanimating old motifs with new techniques and confidence. This opening gambit may be fun, but ultimately only serves as the interlude of that aforementioned feeling that binds this album. It’s the absolutely fantastic ‘Gallery Of Honour’ and ‘Mother Belfast’ that realises everything fantastic about this brilliant record.
Still a relatively new band, the amount of high quality, grandiose music that FOXCULT have released is astounding. Only beginning to dip their toes into the touring world this year, the five piece have also completed ‘THE AMETHYST DRIFT‘, continuing the story from last year’s phenomenal THE INDIGO FAULT. This record jumps straight back into proceedings, mixing space exploration with allegories for transitioning, the band have continued to pay homage to bands like Saosin and Thrice, with the soaring and at times, haunting vocals of Audrey Lane and driving guitar work of Ashley Carrera at the fore.
‘Holding Patterns’ opens the piece, lulling you in before you’re sucked into a track that wouldn’t be too out of place on a Balance And Composure record. Subtle instrumentation allows Audrey to tug at your heartstrings with metaphor and emotion. It all coalesces into a frankly stunning guitar solo and gives the impression of slowly falling through space, reaching out for something that may or may not be there. The pace quickens with ASTRAL GALLERY, which features some heavier vocals from Outline In Color vocalist Michael Skaggs giving a harder edge to proceedings and provides a wonderful counterweight to Lane’s soaring voice.
LA doomgazers Iress have wandered the plains since 2010 becoming a force of nature exquisitely sculpting themselves within the shoegaze realm, with two albums and 2023 EP Solace to look back on with pride this latest effort executes a less is more approach with joyous results.
Iress are delicate and authentic in their presentation as vocalist Michelle Malley’s angelic drawl is a core element gliding and swooning with a heavy heart into the melancholy of opener ‘Falling’ in which a perfect tandem is formed with the bands Hum-like atmosphere. The swathes of distortion from guitarist Graham Walker are shackled to each other in complete understanding as we enter the eerie warbles of ‘Mercy’ with the moody and creeping toms of drummer Glenn Chu only to erupt into a menacing and devastating spectacle.
Just as capable of being an effortlessly somber experience Malley’s vocals levitate during its slower passages to create ominous intrigue as the layers and textures weave together to enable the euphoric crescendos anchored by low end of bass player Michael Maldonado. Some remnants of more optimistic days can be found in ‘Lovely (Forget Me Not)’ as the instrumentals cantor with brightness into the albums catchiest melodies. Just as quickly as it arrived the optimism evaporates in an instant to give way to the more metallic elements of the bands repertoire as emphatic breakdowns are used sparingly but are all the more effective as the omnipresent Walker swells in and out of existence.
