Sometimes a name just grabs you, and Maryland’s Sloth Herder is one such name. And on their Second self-released EP, the music is often as interesting as the band name.
With a name like Sloth Herder, you would expect a massive crawling, doom/sludge outfit, but that could not be further from the truth. At only 14 minutes, Abandon Pop Sensibility EP is a short, sharp release of grind/black metal/crust, that would be at home on Southern Lord Records. It’s raw and virile but also vibrant with a slight experimental sneer running under the caustic riffs and psychotic black metal croaks. Imagine early The Red Chord, Infernal Stronghold, colliding with Cough or some of the other doom/black acts (Coffinworm, Highgate, Wolvehmmer, Lord Mantis?) and throw in a whole ton of punky pissed off attitude and reverb-filled nastiness and you get some idea of Sloth Herder‘s filthy concoction.
The only downside is that the EP is over in 14 minutes as the 6 tracks and one intro all blaze by in a fetid ooze or feral dog fight before you know it. After a lurching 2-minute intro, “Cowards of the New Age” reveals the band’s teeth with a rattling, discordant, muddy grind ‘n’ blast (“Bleached”) and sickly groove. From there songs really sort of blend into this noisy, caustic mix of blackened grooves punctuated with surly grindcore and even a few moments of odd, experimental bass lines and brief moments of brooding atmospherics (vast 3-minute cuts, “Relapse/Reward” and “Dug Up”).
Abandon All Pop Sensibility really is a quite unique and interesting release, even if it all blows by in a whir that you could feasibly miss if you blinked.
