Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 25/08/2017
Label: Magnetic Eye
Records
Low Flying Hawks
come at you with a chugging, thick mélange of sound you will not soon forget, there's
an aesthetic through this release that makes their second foray sound quite breathtaking.
"Genkaku"
CD//DD//LP track listing:
1.)
Smile
2.)
Uncool
3.)
Virgin Witch
4.)
Space Wizard
5.)
Hallucination
6.)
Twilight
7.)
Sinister Waves
The Review:
Sporting
a bond to sludge metal icons the Melvins is never a bad thing. And such a
relationship is all the more noteworthy when your bag is self described as
ambient metal, known otherwise depending on who you ask as drone metal. In the
case of Low
Flying Hawks, they're even closer to the Washington State
Do
not come to the recording expecting the Melvins' crunch, though. On its successor to
the 2016 debut “Kōfuku”, Low Flying
Hawks instead come at you with a chugging, thick mélange of sound
you will not soon forget.
"Genkaku" (Japanese for
“hallucination” or illusion”) is a mind-bending journey. The swirling guitars
and indecipherable words in "Uncool"
are indicative of that trip – dreamlike, or nightmarish, paths lain bare with Crover's pensive drum duties. A song
such as "Hallucination"
has almost a shoegaze feel to it, even though it is most decidedly doom in
nature. The discerning listener will find a bit of a psychedelic rock influence
in several tracks. Although you may hear such especially in our sludge metal
friends, prototypical notions of 'Melvins side project' this is not. Rather,
there's an aesthetic through this release that makes Low Flying Hawks' second foray
sound quite breathtaking.
At
the same time, the release is punishing when it needs to be. As in “Kōfuku”, the sophomore recording takes
plenty of toilsome turns. The big sound is present and accounted for, complete
with multilayered instrumentation and riffs that build to impressive arcs
throughout. You have to appreciate the King
Buzzo-fronted track "Space
Wizard" for its pacing in this regard, as well as that of "Virgin Witch," which is one
of the most Melvins
sounding songs, in all of the best ways, on this recording. All in all, Low Flying
Hawks exceeds the anticipation one might have about its members'
histories. The band also gets you thinking about how they can expand past that.
"Genkaku"
is available to preorder/buy here
