Northless / Light Bearer

Northless and Light Bearer are different but complementary beasts, and having bought this split for the Northless side, I found myself a fan of both bands when the record finished.

First, the Milwaukee-based Northless offer a couple tracks of clever, unusual sludge riffs with some twisty transitions, heavy drums, and pained vocals. The excellently-titled “For as Long as You Shall Walk the Earth, Your Blood Will Reek of Failure” has an unusual structure and some fantastic melodic guitar parts. The second half of the song breaks down into some wiggly and disorienting fretwork before crashing to its sludgy conclusion. Both Northless songs could have fit nicely on their Clandestine Abuse album, and the band’s legacy of standout heavy riffage remains safely intact.

The British band Light Bearer presents one lengthy composition called “Celestium Apocrypha: Book of Watchers,” an atmospheric post-metal opus that I assume has some sort of sci-fi concept. The sound recalls Cult of Luna’s last couple albums: satisfying chord progressions that aren’t too busy or too fast, drumming with plenty of dramatic tom grooves, mid-range core-style vocals plus the occasional clean vocal passage, and washes of airy keyboards hovering in the background. Light Bearer shows some range during this song; loud, gnarly parts blend into more meditative parts very smoothly. It’s not hard to imagine Light Bearer catching on with fans of NeurIsis-style post-metal, and their composition is a nice contrast to the harsher Northless side.