Mouth Breather

There have been a couple of new sub-genre labels attached to this progressive outfit from London’s mean streets such as: “lounge doom”, “caveman sludge”, “stoner thrash”, or the band’s own coined style “caveman death and roll blues”. If nothing else, it points to an original direction and an avant-garde attitude towards creating metal music. There’s barely a stylistic avenue left unexplored on this seven chaptered book of an LP, nor does vocalist Ben De La Cour see it as necessary to stick to a single vocal style for more than a minute at a time. The only criticism that could be validly thrown at these guys is that they might be just a little too original for their own good.

The bulk of the contents on this well conceived independent debut tend to resemble a combination of sludge and traditional doom metal, with a slight tilt towards the hard core sensibilities of the former. Occasional smatterings of 80s thrash and early death/thrash work their way in and out of several songs on here, along with a few progressive quirks that sound like they rose right out of the swamps of Louisiana and somehow made their way to the land of fish and chips. Somehow in the midst of all this, a balance is struck up between the loose nature of most doom oriented metal and the tight togetherness that is expected out of a reputable speed metal band.

Everything starts off with this gloomy little intro that invokes images of decrepit corpses being reanimated by the maddened Lovecraft character “Herbert West”. Comparisons could be drawn to gloomy landscapes put forth on Overkill’s ballads off “The Years Of Decay” album when dealing with the couple of quiet sections that come and go in this near 7 minutes epic. But the bulk of what is built around them is more in line with the riff mad fury heard out of Morbid Saint or Sodom, but with a slightly muddier guitar tone. The vocal approach is dirty and mostly Punk-like, but avoids the toneless barks common to the death/thrash sound that this otherwise tends to flirt with.

Although “Herbert West” would alone suggest a very eclectic approach to doom metal, the band does a near 180 on the next song. Although the band does resort to a pretty wicked thrash riff finale, “Sailor Song” is mostly an exercise in a sludge injected fit of sea sickness and misery. Parts of it sound like straight up death/doom, other times the vocals clear up a little and you’d swear you were hearing an even darker version of Alice In Chains, followed by this little acoustic bridge/turnaround that could’ve fit into one of Dokken’s mid-80s ballads.

Probably the closest thing to a stylistically consistent song is the next one “Indie Fags Fuck Off”, which is basically pure early Napalm Death style hard core with lower end guitars and a slight helping of Cro Mags style thrashing goodness. But then like a bad habit, that avant-garde oriented doom metal caveman comes back with his heavy ass club to beat some more metallic sense into the listener. “Scales On Crows” and “Steel Horse Blues (The Plight)” represent the 4th and 5th paths of the sludge caveman turned eastern philosopher. The former is a weird as hell mishmash of muddy stoner metal with a strong side dish of southern sensibilities. One moment you hear this really dark sounding section with a slide guitar that conjures up images of the depopulated metropolitan areas depicted in Steven King’s “The Stand”, and the next you hear this really nasty meshing of guitar effects that listen like Saint Vitus and Electric Wizard getting together and exhaling the biggest puff of ganja smoke ever. The latter is a little more conventional and only combines a Sabbath oriented mix of up tempo traditional doom ideas with a banjo.

The last two songs see the band leaving the realm of the surreal for that of the sea. “March Of The Dugong”, which is perhaps an ironic title for an aquatic mammal that never leaves the water, keeps the mix of Sabbath ideas and sludgy overtones going. Out of all the songs on here it is the most traditional sounding in its application of muddy dissonance and low end rock riff ideas. The only flaw is that Ben’s voice gets a little whiny and almost comes off like a slightly more in tune version of Kurt Cobain, a lone annoyance that only occasionally pops up in the other songs. The album’s closer and longwinded epic “Iron Whale” is mostly a longer version of the slow blend of doom and stoner influences heard on the previous 3 songs, gradually building from a slow droning number into something faster and quite technical. The points of interest mostly occur in the vocals until things speed up, as what occurs there is an interesting tradeoff of tuneful baritone verses and raspy hard core yells.

If you can take in all of this and somehow picture how it would sound, you’re probably an expert in every known sub-genre within the doom matrix. Probably the biggest issue in this band getting a wider audience is finding listeners versatile enough in their tastes to take all of this in. People of the doom persuasion who like loose sounding, muddy acts like Trouble, Saint Vitus, and Electric Wizard and can handle a dose of speed for extended sections will probably take to this the most. They say every time you try something new you’re taking a gamble, but if doom is your preference, in this case its one well worth taking.

Originally submitted to (www.metal-observer.com) on August 7, 2008.