Stephen Murray

This review first appeared on  Broken Amp  on 24 May 2017. Identifying genre is often contentious, especially when a band’s membership comes from diverse musical backgrounds or has consciously decided to bridge the conceptual gaps between. But far from narrowing the artistic potential of a band or solo musician, genre tags can be useful tools with which to find and select musical preferences, providing they remain adaptable and are descriptive rather than prescriptively laying down what music ought to sound like. But this freedom also risks their most useful function being undermined. ‘Sludge’ as a label for a style of heavy rock and metal is in danger of depreciation. As more and more bands of vastly disparate styles are tagged with it, its usefulness as a label and filter grows ever more uncertain. We learn to mistrust it. In such a treacherous and unstable landscape, London’s Gurt appear as a reliable if more recent landmark, ticking many of the boxes you would expect ...

This review first appeared on  The Sludgelord  on 26 April 2017. I missed the release of Without Condolence at the end of last year. Cowardice is not a name I have seen about too much, either, but it should be. Somewhere between the despairing chug of Arizona’s gone-but-not-forgotten Wellington and the searing angst of His Hero Is Gone , this debut is the collective effort of some New Jersey scene regulars. It was recorded last summer and it moves like a soot crusted diesel-electric freight train leaking oil and coughing a dark brown carcinogenic fume. The drumming is a thing of beauty. It slinks and slouches; explodes, shimmers and tinkles. The vocals have that clawing desperation that perfectly exploits the emotional weight of the music which sways between melancholic, gritty, picked melodies and fully blown out chords as evil as pitch-shifted black metal. The whole tone of the album is so well judged that the acoustic number sandwiched in the centre doesn’t feel ...

This review first appeared on  The Sludgelord  on 11 April 2017. There is a Riff . It’s of the swampy kind that jacks directly into what remains functional of your richly barbecued, southern fried central nervous system. It appears about three minutes into the record’s opening song, ‘Veiled Aggressor,’ but you’d be doing it a disservice to skip ahead. The angry hardcore hammering of the first minutes leads into it perfectly, and is more than a vehicle to get you there; it’s a foot stomper of its own. Little wonder that this was the track used to signal Witchapter ’s arrival. The band’s debut release is the latest thing on Black Bow Records menu. So fresh, in fact, their first official outing was only a couple of weeks ago when they opened for Italy’s blackened warlocks Hierophant in a rather badly attended basement beneath a bar on the Margate coast. Having played their three extant songs (choosing a set order that took ‘Veiled Aggressor’ from the top and dropped it ...