Five young men from Nottingham have decided to take a Robin Hood-like stand against the metalcore establishment, but apart from robbing from the richer bands and regurgitating metalcore riffs of old, they have reclaimed the genre as their own, tinkering with the credentials and creating an abrasive mix of violence and technicality. Think Mastodon meets Meshuggah with a twiddling dose of Necrophagist thrown in for good measure, and you still won’t quite understand.
This is tech-metal at its sludgiest, and although the song titles like ‘She Looks Like A Dead Heat in a Zeppelin Race’ might give you the impression that these are a bunch of merry men, you will soon hear that they are in fact very, very pissed off, shrieker John Eley screaming and growling his heart out. The aforementioned track and ‘The Circling’ manage to show that discordant noise can actually form riffs, but juxtapose this sludgy groove with high fretwork from the nimble fingers of Martin Clarke and Eric Revill. Once you get your jaws into ‘…And The Sharks Took The Rest’, it’s clear that the band can also hold down a heavy double bass rhythm, led by Ross Alexander’s pulverising drum work.
This is a extremely promising demo, and will appeal to not only the bearded masses of sludgecore fans with things through their ears bigger than my fist, but death metal and tech metal fans alike. Check them out on their following tour, but I would stay well clear of the pit for the violence that will ensue!
http://www.myspace.com/tbttbiggerboat
