Here’s an impressive slab of darkly sludgy, doomy, belligerent atonal hardcore adorned with some neat Tom Denny artwork (Mastodon, Yakuza, Soilent Green, Rwake, Kylesa).
While The Dead See shares artwork with the above named bands, they are not too drastically different from those artists either. While most doomy hardcore is simply hardcore at its base level with a few slower, oozing parts mixed in, The Dead See, at their root appear to be a competent, more noise-core/sludge band with a hardcore gloss-and its very effective.
I also hear some Crowbar (especially “Sons of Silence”) and some Neurosis (at their most vitriolic-there’s little ambience or delicate moods here) in here; thick plodding discordance with a dark undercurrent and a pulsing, precise lope that’s ominous foreboding and tangibly menacing (especially the sample “ECT”). The wide appeal of The Dead See should give fans of say, The Abominable Iron Sloth and Negative Plane a rise with thier crushing tones (“Traversing the Mountain of Knives”, “Beyond the Lake of Sleep”) and the doom/dirge/post rock fans should enjoy closer “Memento Mori”. The only real drawback is the hardcore vocals of Neil Barrett, which add nothing to the claustrophobic guitars and rhythm section (except for the afore mentioned “Memento Mori”).
Either way this is a solid slab of metal, no matter how you cut it, and Pluto Records has a promising, noisy young act on their hands.
