Unmaker (studio album) by LLNN

From Mercury 10/12/2021 17:09

(Smothering, rabid, sludge metal riffs for days with some seriously pained and passionate hardcore punk vocals over top, with a nice dose of post metal and atmospheric metal to spice up the flow and sound of the whole album. This is just really excellent and obscenely heavy sludge. It's good.)

I love this style, this brutal, black, hopeless heavy-as-the-end-times sludge style. I love me some Neurosis and some other more artsy, slow building, minimalist, experimental atmo sludge. But for me when the balance is much further in the direction of Hardcore punk-infused, filthy sludge than the Isis-esque, post metal sludge I am much more likely to love a sludge album. This album seems to be 80% thick walls of pure pissed off sludge and 20% atmospheric, slow-build, scene-setting, Through Silver In Blood-lite sludge. I like this.

That is not to say there aren't subtle, truly gorgeous, post-metal passages here. Cuz there are. And they are fabulous. But these short detours work to quickly give me a sonic tour of the world in which these screamed vocal agonies and ear-wrecking absurdly heavy riffs and noisy explosions live. There are no 5 or 10 minute almost dark ambient pieces on here that fill in the gaps between the madness. Instead the darkly ambient, hopeless, gorgeous bits are short and sweet and mesmerizing and then they go as fast as they come and the glorious sound of LLNN's guitars come back to smother us again.

This is probably my 2nd favorite sludge album of the year. I do think that the new Body Void album from earlier this year was more thrilling and animalistic and overwhelming. BUT this album ain't too far off in terms of vicious pummeling Sludge metal glory while also working in some gorgeous post metal and atmospheric sludge metal elements. This is super solid stuff. And as a first introduction to this group LLNN, its fabulous. I definitely plan on going earlier and checking out earlier stuff from them as well as jumping right on any future releases they have.