Red Beard Wall - 3

 

 

Red Beard Wall - 3
Desert Records - July 2021
Sludge, doom, stoner, punk
Rated: ****

West Texas riff merchants Red Beard Wall return with their third album, aptly titled "3", this July, and mastermind Aaron Wall's winning formula of crushing sludge and catchy melodies delivers once again. True to form, Wall's lyrics evenly share the stage with his amps' harsh noise and the stripped down drums. Alternating between understated cleans and throat-shredding screams, the vocals are brutally earnest yet hopeful, making each track an urgent call to action against society's many ills. Even before getting to the meat of the album, instrumental opener "Tap" sets the stage with a massive, gnarly guitar tone as an earworm riff snakes along the groove. Follow-up "March Forth" then dives into the band's signature staccato drum assault, slabs of weighted sludge grinding over a very literally marching beat. The track is a powerful, no-bullshit sendup of the US's recent and current struggles, a timely and refreshing change of pace in the genre. Highlight cut "My Brothers" hits even harder, shifting from melodic beginnings to battering waves of distortion as Wall makes a heartfelt and inspiring case for himself and his fellow men to do better by their "mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters". Wails, feedback, and thunderous kit-work send the track to its epic conclusion, and the listener even deeper into Red Beard Wall's latest opus. "3" is unrelentingly heavy in every sense of the word, from a band unafraid to speak their truth and hammer it home with style and power.

(Written by Shasta Beast)

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