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STEAK NUMBER EIGHT
www.steaknumbereight.com
Newly signed to Indie Recordings, Belgium's Steak Number Eight are back with album number three, 'The Hutch'. Press blurb still references their surprisingly young ages - "a collective age of less than eighty" amongst the four members - and while a valid statement in one sense as the maturity in their songwriting is rather astonishing considering their tender years, there'll have to be a cut-off point soon where marketing peeps stop playing the "youth" card. This is their third album after all. While 2011's 'All is Chaos' was a big step forward from the band's 2008 debut, 'When the Candle Dies Out...', 'The Hutch' is something of a sideways step from its predecessor. During its strongest moments, this latest effort from the Belgian lads equals the best songwriting from 'All is Chaos' although, as with that album, 'The Hutch' is a tad patchy so it's not a compositionally consistent release. With an overall playing time past the seventy minute mark, one or two tracks seem unnecessarily long and plodding with little direction so their repeated musical motifs become quite tiresome ('Photonic', for me, is the worst offender in this sense). Other lengthy songs, however, work a treat where central sonic themes are progressed and built upon, transforming simple ideas into emotively layered crescendos of affective aural sublimity ('Push Pull' and 'Tearwalker' being prime examples). Also on the plus side, while Steak Number Eight have stuck to their blend of sludgy stoner grooves and post-metal/post-rock dynamic, there is still no real formula or regurgitated structural elements underpinning their songs - each track is its own naturally progressive entity and feels quite fresh (ignoring the inconsistent compositional blips). Plus frontman Brent Vanneste has a voice that seems to be maturing with each release, both clean and growled. However, all in all, I can't help but feel ever so slightly disappointed as I had high hopes for Steak Number Eight's latest. Problem is, they set the bar of promise too high on 'All is Chaos'. As such, 'The Hutch', while still a very good album, falls a little short of true greatness. But, hey, as we're constantly reminded, they're still young so the future for this bunch of Belgians is still a promising one.
LABEL:
FORMAT:
Indie Recordings
Album
THE HUTCH
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Review by Mark Holmes
RUNNING TIME:
73:38
RELEASE DATE:
22nd April 2013
TRACK LISTING
1) Cryogenius
2) Black Eyed
3) Photonic
4) Push Pull
5) Pilgrimage of a Blackheart
6) Exile of Our Marrow
7) The Shrine
8) Slumber
9) Ashore
10) Rust
11) Tearwalker
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:
Belgium
"...central sonic themes are progressed and built upon, transforming simple ideas into emotively layered crescendos of affective aural sublimity..."
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