MOPE - S/T - Album Review

Album Type:Album

Date Released: Feb 22nd 2014

Label: Taxi Driver Records

Mope – S/T - track listing:

1.Old Grey Street 07:31

2.Doomed To Feed The Ground 12:57

3.La Caduta 09:57

Bio:

MOPE is an instrumental doom metal band formed in Genova (Italy) in 2011 by Fabio Cuomo (Drums // Eremite), Stefano Parodi (Bass // Vanessa Van Basten), Jessica Rassi (Guitar // The Giant's Lab) and Sara Twinn (Saxophone // Folagra). They love minimalist and repetitive but heavy and distorted drones and stoner doom metal riffs, together with slow ambient/jazz environments. Each member comes from a different music background but they all agree on listening to Earth, Om and Sleep. What comes out is a mix of heavy sonorities and elements of avant-garde metal, with the saxophone as a peculiar vocal line. For fans of Yakuza, Minsk, Callisto but also any doom metal, post metal, stoner and psychedelic music lover.

Mope's self-titled debut album will be out on 22nd February 2014, released by Taxi Driver Records (Genova, Italy) in CD and digital format. "Mope" was recorded at Cdm, then mixed and mastered at El Fish Recording Studio. The CD cover artwork is a drawing by Jessica Rassi (The Giant's Lab).

Band Members

Drums: Fabio Cuomo (Eremite)

Bass: Stefano Parodi (Vanessa Van Basten)

Guitar: Jessica Rassi

Saxophone: Sara Twinn (Folagra)

Review:

Less than a minute into opening track Old Grey Street I knew I was listening to something very different. Out of a modest, lone drum beat comes not a crushingly heavy riff (that comes a few moments later) but the unexpected, sultry tones of a saxophone. This is not standard doom metal as we have come to know it.

Instrumental band Mope, from Genoa, Italy, have hit the ground running with their debut full-length record, which is as simplistic as it is alluring and, clocking in at the half hour mark, is as teasing as it is captivating. The contrast between the records slow-jazz moments as well as the clear, defined saxophone where the vocal lines should be, and the rough, sometimes lo-fi sounding guitar riffs and doom metal gloom is striking yet not overpowering. Really it works far better than it probably should.

The band have taken somewhat of a simple, minimalist approach to their music but that doesn't mean there aren't subtle yet commanding intricacies. Upon first listen I was instantly taken with the record but maybe felt as though I was left ever so slightly underwhelmed. On repeated listens I have realised this is not the case. You will find no frantic tempo here, no sudden or sharp changes in its pace, but rather a weary, sorrowful yet graceful journey so unrelenting in its misery that you may just find your mind wandering or shutting down towards it's conclusion. However, listen to the record again and you may just be rewarded with very small yet very significant qualities within it that slipped your attention. It's oh so easy to find a dark-jazz record so repetitive and simplistic in its nature that it leaves you feeling it lacks any kind of spark whatsoever. Mope have a spark. Briefly and sporadically flickering back into life throughout a peaceful slow-burn.

With the albums three tracks woven together with an interlude of slow, ambient drone and a piano mirroring the elegance of the saxophone, Mope are not making music that will feature on the playlist for your next party. You aren't going to play this record through earphones when you go for a run or first thing in the morning with coffee to energise you for the long day ahead. Mope are not making music to bang your head to. Instead this is a thirty minute trip through darkened, dingy clubs bathed in thick cigar smoke or a lonely late night stroll through a city illuminated with bright lights yet seemingly devoid of life. This is a band making the kind of music that fits their name exactly.

Written by Neil Ainger

Thanks to Sara at Taxi Driver Records for sending us a promo of this excellent album. Mope S/T album is available to buy on DD and CD now from Taxi Driver Records BandCamp Page.

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Narrow Lands - Popular Music That Will Live Forever

Narrow Lands is a Sludge/Noise-Pop/Punk Band from Sydney, Australia

The members are: Alan, Andrew, Ivan, Lee

 I'm a firm believer that beauty can be found in dark, evil places and noise-rock quartet Narrow Lands, from Sydney, Australia are another band to confirm those beliefs. Their debut album Popular Music That Will Live Forever is, simply put, an exceptional example of an album that, on paper, may only give you reasons to dislike it when in reality it is more than worthy of your attention.

The opening track Triple J Drivetime Hit features slow, droning riffs, setting the scene for a slow crawl through crushing sludge and amplifier worship - before the second track Whores Rule, packed with pounding drums and meaty riffs, provides a sudden shift in pace and bass-heavy third track Usefulness, teases something more in the realm of sharp, rigid hardcore. 

What the album is, arguably more than anything, is chaotic. Frankly it's difficult to pigeon-hole and classify it, as it isn't necessarily bound by the limitations of typical genre compliance but rather seeks to exist on it's own. This album sounds like four guys with a passion for making music, and for making music loud, heavy and aggressive. A savage and peculiar offering of tumultuous noise-rock that, fittingly, sounds as though a fancy studio space was overlooked in favour of recording in someone's shed.

It sounds this way because that's exactly how this album was created, and it really is done to perfection. In fact it boasts such a strange sound that the very first thing that hit me upon first listen was a very unfamiliar and perplexing part of that sound, something I just could not isolate and identify. So, as with everything these days, I turned to the internet to seek the information I requested. This is what I found:

“We leaned a baritone guitar up against the (slightly detuned and old) piano, plugged the guitar through as many pedals as possible so that when you played the piano it reverberated through the guitar and made this big impressive rumbling sound".

All of a sudden everything made sense. All the bizarre pieces that go together to make this record now fell into place. The strange textures, the brash assault of ugly riffs and drums, the heavily distorted and sparingly-used vocals and the walls of feedback mixed with moments of real melody is a head-fuck, no doubt, but in an addictively alluring way.

Popular Music That Will Live Forever will continue to climb the list of personal albums of the year I'm sure. It may not be a pleasant record to listen to. In fact it is a difficult, sometimes challenging and demanding album that I imagine could easily become the soundtrack to some rather bad dreams. However it also happens to be creative and powerful music, all with a very charming DIY feel to it.

As I said, the simplest way to describe this album is that it is four guys, in a shed, playing rock music very, very loudly. Sometimes there is just no need to mess with that.

Written by Neil Ainger

Thanks to Narrow Lands for sending us a promo to review. Popular Music That Will Live Forever is available to buy on DD/Vinyl now from BandCamp.

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Pet Slimmers Of The Year - Fragments Of Uniforms - Album Review

Pet Slimmers Of The Year

Fragments Of Uniforms

Anchor Music
Released: Early 2014

The members are:

Gowan
Vinten
McKenna

Track Listing:

1. Arterias
2. Gathering Half the Deep and Full of Voices 

3. Tides 

4. Mare Imbrium
5. Churning of the Sea of Milk
6. Days Since I Disappeared
7. Fragments
8. La Tormenta

Running Time: 54 mins 32 seconds

Post-rock can be a tricky thing. It's a genre both boasting a wealth of talented bands and inventive musicianship while also being steadily bogged down by a host of copycats and bandwagon-jumpers, offering little to no originality in their music and appearing content in recycling the same, tired formula and ideas.

Pet Slimmers of the Year are a band from Peterborough, England and are no strangers to this blog. Formed in 2008 and having since released two EPs - the self titled Pet Slimmers of the Year in 2009 and 2010s ...And the Sky Fell, both of which were met with some fanfare here at The Sludgelord, they are finally set to release their debut full-length album which is scheduled to drop this winter. PSOTY are a band that are maybe not exactly reinventing the wheel, but are more than bringing enough to the table to warrant a place in any post-rock fans collection. That's for sure.

From the very first track of Fragments of Uniforms entitled Arterias, the gentle progression of the bands blend of post-rock and atmospheric sludge metal is clear, as the steady but thunderous drumming and the delicate instrumentation builds, the weight of the slowly layered guitar lines becomes more aggressive and the mood grows darker throughout the first half of the record. The subtlety of the progression in the tone and the gradual crescendo of intensity climaxes with the track Churning of the Sea of Milk which explodes immediately into a dose of riff-heavy, down-tempo sludge metal. A track that offers several changes in pace and a trading of the trademark light and dark of the elegant post-rock and the ugly sludge riffs, before the listener is again dragged back into the gentle nature of its smooth and refined soundscapes with the aid of some sparingly used and droning vocal harmonies. 

Most post-rock bands out there, of course, indulge in the minimalist, gradual build-up in their sound that the genre has become known for but with such an often-replicated and recycled formula, it is easy for a record to lose its direction. This record offers exactly what I believe a post-rock or post-metal album should offer. Both a light, easy and relaxing option for background music, and an album that only reveals it's real complexity when afforded a persons full attention. 

Fragments of Uniforms is a very precisely structured, intelligently crafted record and certainly benefits from repeated listens.

Written by Neil Ainger

Fragments of Uniforms will be available to buy early 2014. If you can't wait till then the band have about 9 copies left of their CD here. As they printed a limited edition batch of CD's before the release date. I bought my copy. And it's a truly breathtaking album.

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Bigcartel

Headover to their BandCamp Page to download their earlier excellent EP's for free.