By: Carter "The Sauce" Wiedenhoeft
Not all good music is accessible. Not all people agree on what constitutes “good music”. The album reviewed herein is not accessible. Many people may not think that it is good. It is, however, undeniably a very well assembled piece of art. The album to which I am referring is the sophomore release from Connecticut’s doom purveyors Sea of Bones: “The Earth Wants Us Dead”. If you don’t have your speakers turned to eleven for this one, you’re gonna want to get on that, pronto, ‘cause it’s meant to be heard one way and one way alone: LOUD. The aural onslaught commences right away in the first track “The Stone, the Slave, and the Architect”, which plods ominously forward with slow, deliberate low notes and heavy distortion. Guttural vocals drive themselves into the ears of the listener, combining with guitar staccato and lumbering bass to form a sense of overwhelming dread that abates (albeit slightly) at various points in the album only to crescendo almost immediately and drag the listener right back into the sense that the earth does, almost definitely, want us dead. Standout tracks include the aforementioned opener, “Black Arm”, which reviewers opine almost unanimously to be quite Neurosis-esque (Neurosis is a sweet hardcore/sludge band. Check them out); “The Bridge”, which contains passages quite reminiscent of stoner metal staples, such as Sleep or Red Fang; and the utterly destructive and excruciating 40-minute title track. “The Earth Wants Us Dead” is a torturous drone piece that carries the listener over a vast, apocalyptic nothingness. In some places, the tone of the track picks up, showing the faintest glimmer of hope in a world now devoid of man, only to drop again, dashing that hope against the jagged edges of the sinkhole we’ve all been swallowed into. The track’s duration and repetition devour the listener’s sense of time, giving way to the question “is it over?”.
“The Earth Wants Us Dead” combines crushing, plodding doom, fuzzy sludge, and melodic, funerary passages to create this masterpiece of all-consuming noise and take the listener on a wild ride through the end of the world. The album was first released on CD and digitally, Halloween 2013, but has recently been pressed to vinyl and released by Gilead Media. Sea of Bones recently played the record label’s music festival, Gilead Fest, in Oshkosh, WI, July 2014.
Not all good music is accessible. Not all people agree on what constitutes “good music”. The album reviewed herein is not accessible. Many people may not think that it is good. It is, however, undeniably a very well assembled piece of art. The album to which I am referring is the sophomore release from Connecticut’s doom purveyors Sea of Bones: “The Earth Wants Us Dead”. If you don’t have your speakers turned to eleven for this one, you’re gonna want to get on that, pronto, ‘cause it’s meant to be heard one way and one way alone: LOUD. The aural onslaught commences right away in the first track “The Stone, the Slave, and the Architect”, which plods ominously forward with slow, deliberate low notes and heavy distortion. Guttural vocals drive themselves into the ears of the listener, combining with guitar staccato and lumbering bass to form a sense of overwhelming dread that abates (albeit slightly) at various points in the album only to crescendo almost immediately and drag the listener right back into the sense that the earth does, almost definitely, want us dead. Standout tracks include the aforementioned opener, “Black Arm”, which reviewers opine almost unanimously to be quite Neurosis-esque (Neurosis is a sweet hardcore/sludge band. Check them out); “The Bridge”, which contains passages quite reminiscent of stoner metal staples, such as Sleep or Red Fang; and the utterly destructive and excruciating 40-minute title track. “The Earth Wants Us Dead” is a torturous drone piece that carries the listener over a vast, apocalyptic nothingness. In some places, the tone of the track picks up, showing the faintest glimmer of hope in a world now devoid of man, only to drop again, dashing that hope against the jagged edges of the sinkhole we’ve all been swallowed into. The track’s duration and repetition devour the listener’s sense of time, giving way to the question “is it over?”.
“The Earth Wants Us Dead” combines crushing, plodding doom, fuzzy sludge, and melodic, funerary passages to create this masterpiece of all-consuming noise and take the listener on a wild ride through the end of the world. The album was first released on CD and digitally, Halloween 2013, but has recently been pressed to vinyl and released by Gilead Media. Sea of Bones recently played the record label’s music festival, Gilead Fest, in Oshkosh, WI, July 2014.