A mysterious and unassuming CD arrives in the depths of Ave Noctum, very neatly packaged in a lovely sleeve and all the way from Sweden. So what can it be? Um, well, they are seemingly named after a Ufomamaut album and the title relates to the Hindu philosophy of birth and rebirth…. Goregrind!? Nah, just kidding. Slow, doom inflected sludgy stoner of course.
What we have is a professional demo of three tracks clocking in around the 10 to 15 minute mark each.
The opener, ‘Shelter’ begins in a slow almost post-rock way, a bleak melody that half reminds me of ‘This Dustbowl Earth’ by Apostle Of Solitude, but uses it’s length in a completely different manner and slowly but surely winds up the intensity with the fat fuzzed out riff dragging through some fine mud. Sparsely used gruff vocals break up the instrumental vibe but all in all a nice, solid song with a bit of the unusual in that opening. Solid if unspectacular production, a nicely balanced sound and some good, dense riffing. Pretty cool.
‘In The Wake’ is a touch more aggressive, at least to begin with: More obviously tipped towards the sludge, it pushes out some heavy waves of guitar and bitter, calling vocals interspersed by some quite placid pools of reflective music. This leads into the title track which has a more rolling, chaotic even feel to the riffs with leads that amidst the cacophony hint at maybe an Indian feel before the waves of gritty sludge crash over it.
It all sounds pretty good and, in fact if this is their first output it is pretty excellent for those first steps. They have composed these songs with thought and a pretty sure touch and marked out where they want too be heading. ‘Shelter’ is my clear favourite here though as, for me, it has more character and colour than the others and the slow winding of the tension is handled very well. Not that there is anything remotely bad here at all; quite the reverse in fact as Snailking have done what every demo should seek to do – show skill, inspiration and intent and that it does well. I think at times they do get a little blinkered, a touch of the ‘this riff for the next seven minutes then go a bit quiet’ formula which keeps their personality still in the developmental stage, and personally I long for someone to try and step away from these kind of crying out, rough vocals, but frankly they are still a fine, fine prospect. A bit more of a crushing production, a lighter touch on those quiet passages; all things that will come. And judging by this they are probably streets ahead of me on this already.
They have this on CD and a ‘name your price’ download so check them out now, ‘cos I reckon we will be hearing a much bigger noise from them very soon.
(6.5/10 Gizmo)
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