By Monk
I love it when I’m able to approach an album without any preconceptions, either media- or self-induced. And so it is has been in this case, as this album arrived in the ÜRHQ inbox with absolutely ZERO information attached. All that we got was the name of the band and the album, and that all-important link to listen to/download the latter – which is actually a four-track EP… The fact that the band are signed to the ever-eclectic and usually super-reliable Nuclear Blast imprint did indeed pique my interest enough to hit the “read” button – and subsequently that marked “download”, as Alluvial have produced the first genuinely heavy release of this nascent new Über Rockin’ year…
The title, ‘Death Is But A Door’, hinted at something dank and gloomy, something that would take us to the darkest nether reaches of our own dank, dark and gloomy souls, and indeed it proves to be the case, as ‘Death…’ is as dank, dark and gloomy, yet enervating and joyous, release as you could wish to be impaled on your aural sensibilities at the start of this new year.
Kicking off with a deceptively upbeat, almost thrashy, intro, opener ‘Bog Dweller’ quickly takes us into the grimy, sludgy musical world produced by this highly-suitably monickered combo, one dominated by huge riffs encrusted in so much muck and mud that you could grow enough potatoes in it to feed the world for an entire decade. ‘Fogbelt’ features squealing guitar wails that cut through the dense underlying grimness like air-raid sirens through a pea-souper, while ‘Area Code’ is a simply monstrous slice of swamp-drowned doom, it’s grit and growl underpinned by a series of massive blastbeats that emphasize the sheer heaviness of what is going on here.
The closing, title track is an immense slice of NOLA-infused, grunge/nu-metal inflected dark pop doominess, as infectious as a dose of Ebola but as heavy as being hit in the face by a ten-tonne tractor, emphasizing in emphatic (sic) the overall impact which this declarative EP delivers, mixing dance-able grooves with concrete-solid riffs which serve the foundation for a hugely impressive offering. Twenty twenty-four: the challenge has been laid down.
- ‘Death Is But A Door‘ is released on Friday 12 January.
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