The Finnish Sludgy-doom metallers are set to release their brand new EP on Thursday. I’m not at all familiar with the band and they only appeared to burst onto the scene last year. However, I love the genre they play and am excited to hear this. And, at only three tracks long, I couldn’t not check it out!
The title track opens the EP perfecto with a sludgy, heavy wall of sound and an excellent riff. It speeds up heading into the verse, almost turning into a thrash/death metal track. The vocals very much reinforce that point too, it being a pretty gritty scream. It slows up into a pretty awesome, groovy bridge riff around the 1:30 mark, it almost having stoner metal vibes when it drops out to just guitar and bass a couple of times. We also get some cool little drum solo bits in the middle, everyone being given a chance to shine throughout. It continues to be heavy throughout, there being multiple awesome riffs in the last two plus minutes that honestly by the end of it my neck hurt from headbanging so much. And the screams in the breakdown at the end… *chefs kiss*. It’s a fantastic way to open the EP, and easily makes our playlist!
‘Sons of Heavy Rain’ opens on one hell of a doom riff or three, and I love it! The main riff through it kinda reminds me of Judas Priest from the 90s onwards too; that awesome technical style and a little lighter than the previous track. The solo over the top matches the feel and vibe perfectly, too. The heaviness of course comes back in with the harsh vocals, but it almost gives off Entombed-style death’n’roll more than anything else. Especially with all the guitar melody and soloing throughout. It has a pretty catchy chorus too with the backing vocals giving it a big hand in that direction. It all combined together perfectly to sound heavy, epic and catchy all at the same time. I honestly can’t get enough of this track, everything about it is awesome. From the vocals to the balls-to-the-wall drumming to the insane guitaring; riffs and pinch harmonics and soloing galor, it’s all amazing. So far the EP is two for two on playlisted tracks!
The final track on the far-too-short EP, ‘Swamp Hammer’ does the Batushka thing of having a slow, low, atmospherically distant riff go on for arguably too long. How very, very stoner-doom of them. As it picks up we get an AWESOME riff that keeps pretty stonery. Even with the harsh vocals giving it a death edge, it’s still undoubtedly sludgy and doomy. And again, multi-tracked vocals make for a pretty catchy chorus! Some of the low growls in the back at times too, damn. There’s a fantastic guitar solo tucked away in the middle, technically fantastic and fit the style of the song perfectly. And we even get an INSANE bass solo too, just as good as the guitar one. This song utterly blew me away and I don’t care, all three of these go on our playlist. Shit, that was awesome.
Overall: As you can probably tell, I loved this! It’s of course a rather niche genre, but I’m big into the style and these guys did all of it to perfection. All three tracks are as good as each other, and all are incredible. I HAVE to see ‘Swamp Hammer’ live, my god I hope they tour near me soon. It’s not going to be for everyone, but if you’re a fan of metal at all check it out, it may definitely surprise you. It’s not often I give this out for EPs, but it can’t be anything else…
The Score: 10/10