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LAY SIEGE
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It's always a worrying prospect being handed a press sheet loaded with turgid and clichéd phrases such as "ferocious", "gargantuan riffs", "full throttle vocals", and "deliciously sludgy". Rarely does a band live up to these claims; often being a crushing lesson in boredom and hate; sometimes a nugget of gold, badly marketed. Thankfully, Lay Siege falls into the category of living up to such claims. They are indeed ferocious and gargantuan in sound. At a mere eighteen minutes long, there's no danger of being bored either, as each song says its piece and kindly allows the next one to air its grievances in brutal fashion. But, to paint a picture of skin-headed shit-kickers spitting in your cornflakes is to miss the finer points contained within. While the blast beats and sandpaper vocals take care of the bruising, the guitars take a decidedly more schizophrenic turn; being both nose-bloodyingly heavy at one turn, and contemplating brooding melodies the next. We're not talking power-ballads of course, but the pacing is multi-dimensional and the sound is nicely layered. 'Wastelands' is a good example; all hell breaks loose during the first minute or so, but the guitar starts to play with snaking melodies towards the end. This paves the way for the best tune on this mini-album - ‘Solitary Confinement’ - which is full of gang-mentality posturing, but in its short three-minutes manages to cram a lot of ideas in the listener’s ear. The subject matters are more than your usual posturing gun-fighting bollocks too; the album title 'Obolus' referring, I'm guessing, to track two 'The Ferryman' (Obolus is a coin placed in the mouths of the dead to pay Charon for their crossing of the river Acheron). Alright, it's not going to win the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, but it's a refreshing change. And, while I'm sure that more than half an hour of this might start to become draining, if they allow themselves to explore their texturing further on their follow-up I have no doubts it will be another triumph. It's not often my expectations are shattered so positively (more often it's the other way around), so I couldn't be happier than to give this CD a cuddle and a few more spins.
LABEL:
FORMAT:
Self-released
EP
OBOLUS
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Review by Steve Cowan
RUNNING TIME:
18:30
RELEASE DATE:
6th August 2012
TRACK LISTING
1) Explorer
2) The Ferryman
3) Snarling Teeth
4) Glitches
5) Wastelands
6) Solitary Confinement
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:
UK
"While the blast beats and sandpaper vocals take care of the bruising, the guitars take a decidedly more schizophrenic turn; being both nose-bloodyingly heavy at one turn, and contemplating brooding melodies the next."
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