Despite being on a label mostly run by members of The Ocean, Lo! are perpetrators of sludge that is slightly more gun-ho in style. It’s certainly fair to say that the Australians pitch themselves more in “No” era Old Man Gloom territory, or even somewhere approaching Mastodon, than they do the more considered terrain of Isis or Neurosis.
Instrumental opener ‘As Above’ sets the scene perfectly clearly. It slowly builds until exploding into the furious hardcore-tinged burst that is ‘Bloody Vultures’. The opening tracks see Lo! at their most furious, with vocalist Jamie-Leigh Smith providing some of the best larynx-shredding vocals you will hear this year. Lo! openly admit the influence of Converge and this decimator of a track demonstrates that clearly with its brutal combination of pace and power. Many of the best moments on the record, in fact, are those when Lo! are going full steam ahead.
Occasionally the near-unrelenting ferocity of Lo!’s attack becomes slightly blunted by its sheer ardour. ‘Caruncula’ in particular suffers slightly from feeling a little too like a continuation of the fifth gear mentalism of ‘Bloody Vultures’ and ‘Ghost Promenade’. For a brief period things look like they might be getting worryingly one-dimensional. One senses that better spacing of the record’s two “ambient” tracks, which are placed just one track apart, would help add a bit of further exhilaration to a couple of the more bombastically heavy moments that appear here.
This view is enhanced by the superb use of quieter moments in the two stand-out tracks. ‘Fallen Leaves’ and ‘Bleak Vanity’ are, on the face of things, slightly more doom-oriented than most of the songs on this record, but this is only because they pretty much run the gamut across Lo!’s stylistic territory. There’s unbound fury next to up-tempo riffing alongside sustained low-end actions and ambient interludes. Indeed, it is when all these elements co-align that Lo! prove themselves to be fairly essential listening for heaviness devotees.
