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Black Tusk Album Review
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Band Name: Black Tusk
Album Name: Taste the Sin Rating: 4 / 5 User Rating: 0 / 5 Label: Relapse Records Buy Album: Amazon.com Rate Album: Rate |
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Tracklist 1. Embrace The Madness 2. Snake Charmer 3. Red Eyes, Black Skies 4. Way of Horse and Bow 5. Unleash the Wrath 6. Twist The Knife 7. Redline 8. The Takeoff 9. The Ride 10. The Crash |
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There must be something in the air around Savannah, Georgia. It might be the heat or the unbearable humidity, but something about this semi-backwoods area is quickly becoming a hotbed for sludge metal. With bands like Kylessa and Baroness currently making some huge waves in the music industry at the moment, it seems like sludge metal is the new trend. Hailing from the same city, Black Tusk is a band that seems to keep to the roots of what makes, what they term swamp metal so interesting. Whereas Kylessa became experimental and Baroness has reached the progressive stage, Black Tusk keeps it simple, rough, and brutal. Swamp metal it seems is a mixture of sludge, doom, stoner, and strangely, punk. It sounds like its name, like some enormous, lumbering beast born in a backwoods bog. "Taste the Sin" the latest album from Black Tusk plods along unstoppably from track to track. From the opening track to the end this trio takes you on a journey through all of the styles that make up swamp metal. The band sounds like so much more than the three pieces that make it up. Guitarist and vocalist, Andrew Fidler, knows what a riff is and how to make it work. Bassist and vocalist, Jonathan Athon, complements every riff perfectly with a bass that is tuned down to almost, and this is not an insult, nu-metal level. You can hear a distinctive twang as it is played. And drummer and vocalist, James May's nearly tribal beat lends a primitive, ferocious rhythm. There isn't a main vocalist in the band as they take turns either growling, screaming, or singing clean throughout the album. This lends a kind of uniqueness to the album that helps them stand apart from a genre that has so many bands that sound alike. The album is not without its faults however. It starts off well with "Embrace the Madness" and “Snake Charmer”, but seems to slightly lose steam across the middle tracks, but does come back to a roaring finish from track 6, "Twist the Knife" until the end. One of my main problems is that each song for the most part seem to blend together and there isn’t enough of a difference to distinguish any track as being a true stand-out. This is evidenced by the fact that on my fourth listen through, I accidentally had my player set to shuffle, and I didn't realize that the tracks were playing out of order. Also the vocals are a bit low in the mix, but this seems to be the style of the genre and not necessarily a knock on this album itself. As a whole the album is amazing though. It deserves to be listened to in it's entirety as opposed to one track at a time. "Taste the Sin" is a great addition to the music style that Mastodon introduced the general public to then stopped playing just as quickly. I for one hope that Black Tusk does not follow the same path and keeps churning out more records like this. The world just needs more sludge. Review by: Josh Poirier Read Member Reviews |
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