Taint, for all the love people had for them somehow always skipped under my radar, so I happily come to this without any ‘does it sounds like Taint ‘ baggage. What does it sound like? Well, friends, I’ve been seeing the word ‘sludge’ bandied about and unless that genre is suffering from severe mission creep that’s utter, total bollocks. From the first crushing chords of ‘Palendromeda’, HARK hit you with the most bloody glorious dose of skull cracking, high energy heavy rock/metal this side of the first three or so High On Fire albums. But, wait! What’s this squirming, sinuous feel to the riff and that wandering bass? What are those dancing drums up to? That my son is prog. And that it is beautiful. With an absolutely spot perfect er… Crystalline production from the hands and ears of Kurt Ballou, this is like sunlight glinting off a freshly polished sledgehammer; everything is picked out sharp and clear without any loss of power even as they bring their huge noise crashing down on you. Oh man you have to hear this. It’s like watching a huge power-lifter do a quickstep. Total power trio dance and destruction.
Dancing, dancing, dancing… Lord how they dance.
Focus Gizmo. Focus.
I’d like to say that ‘the key to this album is… ‘ but there is no key. There are some levers here which help: The complexity of the rhythm section and the immediacy with which they surge into and more than fill the space when the lead guitar goes off on one; the ‘fishing for marlin’ style riffs where they let it have its head, let it run out before the sinew busting effort of hauling it back in; the total locked in support that only comes from a classic no-fat three piece. Listen to the time changes on something like ‘Black Hole South West’ where the bass takes over the lead and falls back again seamlessly. I do admit that, yes I can hear the faint touch of Crowbar in the melody style there but I still maintain any element of sludge is buried under a tsunami of exuberant riff ‘n’ prog energy. The great ‘Breathe And Run’ bounces madly between slow-ish riffing, galloping great 70s guitar hero trills coated in concrete and the tiny but flavoursome pinch of 60s psychedelia all swept along by the run-out-pull-back surge of the riff.
Yep. You can tell by the number of times I’ve mentioned ‘riff’ but HARK is just one huge great riff generator. The line-up of Jimbob Isaac (guitars & those gruff but perfectly fitting vocals), Nikolai Ribnikov on the dancing bass and the ‘how did his wrists stand up to this’ drumming of Simon Bonwick have sledgehammered together a wonderfully unruly slab of heavy rock that utterly belies its status as a debut. If Clutch formed an ice hockey team, HARK would be the fast skating, direction switching slamming enforcer; graceful smooth gliding transformed into vein popping locomotive body check the next.
Talking of Clutch, some bloke called Neil Fallon guests on the epic closer ‘Clear Light Of… ‘, and it has one of those great ‘Fallon-stream-of-consciousness’ duet vocal sections wrapped in an utterly sublime train-like bass line and the brightest, most crystalline guitar break -outs on the album. A perfect transcontinental journey of crunch and sparkling melody that will set your hairs a-crackling and your mouth a grinning. A marvelous end to a boisterous, thundering great trip.
HARK’s Crystalline is the best album of its type that I’ve heard in an age. Now please excuse me, I need to retrieve my socks from the other side of the room.
(9/10 Gizmo)
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