It’s a well-known fact that music is at its most exciting is when it paints a picture. Where it is as visually pleasing as it is sonically. Where your imagination can run as freely and wildly as you can possibly encourage it to. Where nothing is impossible and everything is in reason. London Town’s Slabdragger are a band of that ilk. 5 years on from their first opus ‘Regress’ and after pulling themselves through a fair share of hurdles along the way, the band have returned with the space-based odyssey that is ‘Rise Of The Dawncrusher’, an hour long expedition into the dark, stormy and ball-bustingly heavy.
With only one track clocking in at less than 10 minutes and with uncompromising dirt, delicious feedback and other-worldly imagery dripping from every crevice, ‘Rise Of The Dawncrusher’ is not for the faint of heart. This is music to destroy planets to; it’s thick, crusty and has no regard for the state of your hearing, and that’s exactly how Slabdragger like it.
Rise Of The Dawncrusher by Slabdragger
Opener ‘Mercenary Blues’ batters with old school head-banging fuel, while ‘Evacuate’ thrashes about with hot and heavy dissonance. ‘Shrine Of Debauchery’ bristles and fuzzes with darkened tension before breaking into grooving desolation, ‘Dawncrusher Rising’ hammers the eardrum with piercing beatdowns and harrowing growls and closer ‘Implosion Rites’ finishes things off with discomforting howls of melody and malevolence. Every groove brings to mind a kaleidoscope of visuals and narratives. Every second of music included adding to the shimmering tapestry that the band has created and everything working in perfect balance for a long trip into the deepest and darkest parts of your subconscious. Yeah, it’s just that good.
Overall ‘Rise Of The Dawncrusher’ is an all-consuming barrage of fucked-up riffing and galaxy-sized ambition. What Slabdragger have created is an album that will still conjure new and exciting adventures with each fascinating listen and still be as disturbing and immersive in 5 years as it is now.
4/5
‘Rise of the Dawncrusher’ by Slabdragger is out now on Holy Roar Records.
Slabdragger links: Facebook
Words by Jack Rogers (@JackMRog)
