What is Clagg? Ewwww that’s nasty. For once I shall leave you to look that one up yourselves and considering that this is an album that is about squids and sludge one can only imagine the stench! Ahem but back to the music itself and quickly methinks. Hailing from Melbourne this Australian band have actually had two albums out prior to this one and a live one before that, so they obviously have been playing shows for quite some time. This is a long album clocking in at 65 minutes and containing just six tracks, so it is not doing anything fast. In fact as we slowly go into the ebb and flow of opening track ‘Carrion’ the lazy sounding, smoking a spliff flavoured riffs build up like the aforementioned album cover object rising from the deep. This is a 16 minute monster track and at first reminds me of bands like Orange Goblin and Acrimony. However the stoner licks get heavy and then singer Scotti joins in with a gravely vocal croak etched in barnacles and the riffs get a fuzzy edge to them and start trying to drag you down and drown you. Things get rockier and bounce along with a leaden groove bringing to mind a band like Beaten Back To Pure. There is an almost Southern redneck flavour to this and bands like Weedeater are also brought to mind, no reason why those men down under can’t rock out like those in the deep south of the old USA.
Having proved they can do epic the next tentacular attack takes us on a kraken good ride and tackles the ‘Lord Of The Deep’ in two parts. This fishy fable (yeah I know it’s a cephalopod mollusc don’t all write in at once) has some well placed samples over the quagmire of guitar and bass and the vocals when they join in are really fitting to the sludge laden sound, complimenting things nicely and getting you nodding along and stroking the necessary beard you should have grown listening to this. There is quite a lot going on here too and the song moves into slower territory with acoustic guitar strums letting it glide along and immerse you into its depths.
Having established what they are doing over three lengthy songs the group show they have something a bit different about them on fourth track ‘The Harvest’ as the vocals take on a clean demeanour over a slow plodding riff. It’s not a bad song but on an already lengthy album I think it is a bit surplus to requirements and was surprised how much the vocals actually reminded me of singer Chris Connelly before he goes back into rasping territory. It’s not just him that he does a good job of sounding like though as the band finish the album with a cover of Iron Monkey classic ‘Big Loader’ and the late Johnny Morrow is done proudly too.
All in all ‘Lord Of The Deep’ shows we could have some rising stars from down under here and this is Clagg that is well worth fumbling around with.
http://www.myspace.com/clagg
