You should know that my brain
makes weird associations sometimes. Take, for example, this release. The band
is called Snail, the album is called “Feral”. My brain takes “feral
snail” and pulls up all the scenes from Spongebob Squarepants that I've
ever watched in which Gary
the pet snail goes feral and bears his fangs and fun stuff like that. We may
not have spoken about my Spongebob fixation before, but know that it exists,
and know that I've watched way more of that show than someone my age should
have.
Anyway, you wanted to check this
out because of the band, not my juvenile television habits. I gotta say, I've
never heard this band before but this album just blew me away. This is some
very tasty heaviness and I've not heard a lot of music similar to this
recently. On their shorter songs, they play a kind of swirly, hypnotic,
psychedelic pop, very catchy and tuneful songs with some cool twists. When they
crank out the longer tunes, they show their chops, especially on the droney,
psychedelic side. They are quite adept at playing a ten minute song that feels
as though it went by in a flash, because the music is so entertaining.
To make things just that much
more interesting, there is a song like “Born In Captivity” that almost has a
garage rock feel, just raving along and then dropping down to half speed before
hitting the throttle again. I really enjoy how this band arranges their music.
There is not a single misstep on the album, everything seems well thought out
and put together.
My favorites on the album are
“Building A Haunted House”, the lead track on the album, which could and should
be a pop song if enough people really cared about music these days. The song is
absolute proof that music can be catchy and engaging when created by actual
humans. “Thou Art That” is one of the long tracks on the album and it is a real
pleasure to listen to. It manages to be based on a riff yet also manages to
have a nice drone feel to it so that you can close your eyes and nod your head
and just get lost in the music as you listen. “Derail” is a little mellow at
the start, and a little slower feeling than most of the other tracks, but when
the band hits it, this might be the heaviest track on the entire album.
This album could be a nice
change of pace for you, depending, of course, on what you normally listen to.
If, like me, you spend your days lost in death metal and black metal
soundscapes, this album will surely be a revelation. I'm willing to bet that
even if you listen to music like this all the time, you will still find this
one to be head and shoulders above the crowd, and you'll also find it in heavy
rotation on your music device of choice. Snail, remember the band and
check out this release.
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