Big Bill Shakespeare went on a lot about names. “A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet” sticks with me from school ‘til now, and for the most part it’s true, but one ponders sometimes whether the Bard’s famous quote can be applied totally to music. Would Slayer be as brutal if they weren’t called Slayer? Agoraphobic Nosebleed must take some influence from their name, keeping them at their most inaccessible just as much as their love for insane-tempo beats does.
With that in mind, I plunged straight into the realm of Bastard of the Skies, confident that what I would find would be, as the name suggests, a brutal, soaring, full force pummeling of the deepest, filthiest, sludgiest variety. And guess what? I was fucking right!
From the first discordant blast of opener ‘Drug Monarch’, the scene is set: Jerky, sprawling and spewing aggression from every orifice. Bastard of the Skies may be comprised of three guys and a girl from Blackburn, but their music has taken on its own life as a giant sludge monster, the kind that downs pints of lava and eats your pets. This is the kind of music your granny warned you about, equal parts aggression and hopelessness in a nice little disc.
Now, the only complaint I could possibly have is that at times it can be a little same-y, each track working brilliantly on its own, but towards the end the album becomes a little tiresome, with the bizarrely ambient title track acting as the only respite from the onslaught of non-stop riffage. That being said, when the first few lines of ‘Locklear’ hit, it’s hard not to revel in the pure Crowbar of it all.
Essentially, this is an album that will appeal mostly to sludge-heads, but it’s done exceedingly well. Considering ‘Tarnation’ is their third full-length since their inception in 2006, Bastard of the Skies can’t be called a new band, but I can see this disc gaining them a mighty brood to add to their following in the future!
Out now on Future Noise Recordings.
Posted by Eóin Boylan.
