Self-released digitally late last year, DHU records are stepping up to give the debut album by Chicago’s Faces of the Bog a proper vinyl release – and deservedly so. Pitched as a sludge band with a twist, Faces of the Bog deliver something that’s simultaneously classic and refreshing with ‘Ego Death’. It’ all in the execution, of course.
There’s a low throb and a rushing wind which prefaces the booming, reverby bass intro of ‘Precipice’ and something about the tonality and the vibrations indicates that this is LOUD. Less sludge than a hybrid of desert rock and Earth’s sound since their return a few years ago, and it builds to a blistering crescendo that nods at post-rock and psychedelia and is both, but also neither.
‘Drifter in the Abyss’ brings colossal riffage and raw-throated vocals, a proper, heavy trudge that’s brutal and very much about the bottom end. If the Melvins-esque ‘Slow Burn’ is appropriately titled, the nine-minute ‘The Serpent and the Dagger’ is where they really show what they’ve got. It’s a slow, heavy and expansive piece that gradually unfurls with layer upon later of overdriven guitar crashing in waves against the rolling, thunderous percussion.
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The title track is a throbbing behemoth, grinding out all shades of grey anguish over the course of a furious ten and a half minutes. It’s not all about length, though: check the girth. The bass frequencies are gut-churningly low and thick and throb hard under a welter of pulverizing noise. But there’s also structure and movement: this is articulate, dynamic and engaging as well as powerful and as weighty as hell.
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