I always get a little giddy when I get a release from Transcending Obscurity, mostly because owner Kunal has got one of the best ears in extreme metal when it comes to signing exciting bands. I confess that I hadn’t heard of Lurk before, who are a four-piece Finnish crew who appear to like all things slow, filthy and heavy. I will also mention this – in the press pack that Transcending Obscurity puts out, it’s clear that they have their merch game on point. This is the first band in many a year that I’ve seen put out branded sweat pants!
All of which brings me onto this: just who on earth is going to be wearing sweat pants to Lurk? Let me tell you, the prospect of doing exercise to this leaden, torturous and necrotic hike through a psychotic audio hell-scape is a horror-movie pitch all of its own. If Beavis and Butthead famously commented that Crowbar was workout music for fat people, Lurk are the gym soundtrack to the infernally obese. This is fabulously dense stuff. Opener “Ashlands” is the sound of a person dragging themselves across broken glass. On fire. Seriously, this stuff makes Conan sound like Olivia Newton John. Their vocals are so heavy that I thought that the world was imploding whilst I listened to it. Toward the end of the track, the music dares – dares I tell you – to break out into a lead-booted trot, but be certain – it’s trotting out to find you and stomp you into the dirt.
This is not feel-good music. That’s ok, there’s enough of that kind of stuff about if you want it. This is feel-bad music. It’s slow – oh so slow, and it’s deeply down-tuned, cavernous in the amount of reverb and positively anti-social in its delivery. You may be a more modern listener, who has come to the extreme side of things through one of those -core bands, and you know what? That’s ok. Let me put it this way for you – this is an album that sounds like every ultra-heavy breakdown you’ve ever heard, but the whole track is the breakdown, you’re listening to it as it gets distorted through the gravity crushing heaviness of a black hole, and you’re wearing a granite helmet. Calling this “Sludge” doesn’t do it justice; this is very much grounded in the spirit of horrible death-doom metal, but taken to almost ludicrous extremes. The discordant, warped twists of “Blood Scourge” is almost sickeningly psychotic.
So, having called this feel-bad music, and espoused just how terrifyingly heavy it is, why on earth would you listen to it? Well, because I have listened to a lot of death-doom and sludge over the years, and Lurk have really got me excited. Yes, this is a punishing listen. It’s genuinely horrific, unhinged and effectively a horror movie in audio form. Listen to this to feel something new, to experience a band that are trying to take your listening to the limit – and really, isn’t that a fair proportion of why we all got into the extreme side of music in the first place?
A fantastic release. Hunt it out, pop it on and cause panic with your neighbours.
(9/10 Chris Davison)
Leave a Reply