With a legacy forged in -16- and Cavity, the two piece offering up the aptly named Bestial know a thing or two about caustic, sludgy and ear drum dissolving metal, and flex their experience with suitable with their debut record.With an obvious nod to their former bands, Jason Landrian and Rafael martinez stew up some surly, dirgey, buzz filled nosie that at times sounds like a Mastodon, but the clean angular tones of Mastodon have been kidnaped, beaten and tortured in a Turkish Opium house by Southern Lord’s entire stoner rock roster.
At times lumbering and dense, and at times, sloth like and crawling with feedback, the almost instrumental Bestial staggers with bluesy heft and a hazy sneer veering from gnarly, angry metal (“One Nine”, “El Equis”, “Thrown From Great Heights”, ‘Omniscient” ) that has threads to the recent slew of noise like Lair of The Minotaur and The Abominable Iron Sloth, to loping, red eyed density (“El Duce de Octobre”, “Sombra De Bestia”, “Beneath” ) that comes across like Pelican on some sort of barbiturate fueled drinking and weed binge with High on Fire (“The Cry of Melora”). The infrequent screams of Landrian add some bite and keep things from being a purely instrumental act, but they don’t really complete the noisy package as I would have liked.
In all, yet another quality At A Loss Recordings effort that will make your ears bleed and your teeth gnash.
