Everest Queen – Murmurations
Trepanation Recordings – 2022
Metal, Doom, Sludge, Black, Prog, Post
Rated: ****
Hertfordshire… I often find myself wandering the streets of Stevenage, looking for something cool to do. Not that I live there or that I’m a particular fan of the town. To be honest, I still don’t know much about Stevenage. Although Fairlands park and their Saturday runs are cool, so are the surrounding areas near Walkern, Ardeley, the town of Hitchin and of course who can forget The Squirrel pub near Chells Way. But hey, with relatives living there, you venture over for birthdays, holidays or just for a weekend. Well, next time there, we might have to keep an eye out for the (in the studio) four that are Everest Queen. Are there places in Stevenage where you can perform? Live venues to destroy with your mighty blackened doom sludge? Will you be doing that around the third weekend of October by any chance? For their newest release Murmurations is crushing and will overwhelm you with the first two opening tracks. Opener Sunken Thorn and following Of Treachery And Shadows smash you in the face like a brick hammer. Sunken Thorn slowly and progressively builds, adds extra layers, until it opens up for blackened growling vocals, but where this often might put a track immediately in a certain corner, it now adds to the mysticism and makes it all highly elusive. As it’s thunderous ending, leaving you with an ultimate feeling of liberation, especially if you scream along. Of Treachery And Shadows, with its punchy middle guitar work, its reverberating ending, sounding like an alarming distress call. We’re now sixteen minutes in, and to be honest, you sort of feel like you know what you can expect for the remaining four tracks. But then there’s third title track Murmurations to wash away all those expectations. Three minutes of atmospheric, ambient post rock, which starts with a refreshing rain, before an icy wind whisps it all away. All options are open now, and fourth track Dormant River will show you this in every way you can conceive. Absolute formidable post prog that carries like a meandering stream before turning into a torpid yet crashing rapid, where a certain part will have you gasping for air. Where have these Hertfordshire four found the ability to turn such post sludge, blackened prog into something ambient and at times almost pastoral. The ability to make every composition fluctuate between anger and hope, worthless and precious, something wicked and foul and so idyllic… Just listen to closing track The Burial. We will not be tiring of this any time soon… Beautiful with many hidden thorns…
(Written by JK)
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