End Of The Year Candidate: The Abominable Iron Sloth - S/T

With some of the more popular bands these days playing a bit faster than the once trendy bands of yesteryear, more than a few artists still interested in keeping things both metallic and core have been experimenting with the slower side of tempos.

The Acacia Strain took a creative left turn in "The Dead Walk", and ended up with a happy record label willing to push them hard. Serapis debuted their self-titled album with a major metalcore slowdown that a lot of people fell in love with. I’ve always thought of Cult Of Luna as being the heaviest of the Neurosis pack, and their new album "Somewhere Along The Highway" still contains portions pertaining to their very beginnings. Of course we can’t forget the important return of the classic Celtic Frost with the very important "Monothiest". This year could be remembered for having the slowest tempos, bringing some record bottom-heavy music that’s HEAVY. With that, I bring you the devastating crush of The Abominable Iron Sloth.

An ultra low three pronged guitar contains the exact amount of string slack and down tuned heaviness combined with a hint of looseness to make this some definite sludge for certain. Grooving double bass beats, well timed high barked hardcore vocals, with high grating dissonant tones thrown on top of the sludgy mess keeps the action like an unstoppable battleship plowing through whatever is in its way with unstoppable force. The vocals aren’t the only hardcore appeal, as some of more mid-paced moments serve as wonderful breakdowns.

There are downsides. For such slow songs, and typically being under three minute they’re quite short. The short song length tends to lower the amount of depth within most of the individual songs. The few light injections which make the slow pulverizing that much more destructive by contrast are few and far between. For a full-length that contains nine songs, the album clocks in at only 26 minutes.

The complaints however and tiny and minor, especially in compression to their mammoth sound. Even the band name sounds heavy.

8/10

The Abominable Iron Sloth
Goodfellow Records