The last few years, Ghent has brought to us some national treasures. The city seems to burst with creativity and passionate young musicians. Thanks to small venues like Kinky Star, these youngsters get a place and chance to perform, develop and grow. Silent Snare is a 4-piece band from this city, mixing grunge, sludge and stonerrock with psychedelic influences. Now, for the first time in three years, the band is releasing new tracks upon us.
Perished in Perihelion is a lovely, psychedelic song to start the album with. But when the opening bassline for Yawmuddin (see below) starts, which is by the way a beautiful and fitting transition, is when the album really bursts at the seams. This song has a chills-down-your-spine build-up and climax. Vocalist and guitarist Lucas starts off with clean melodies and ends up screaming, and the rest of the album shows that he can use his voice in many different ways. On the boldly-titled Vegetarians are Biodegradable for example, you can find Truckfighters-like melodies in the vocals. In the crunchy, heavier and more straight-forward Feeding the Ocean, which features an unexpected doomy riff in the end, he uses a technique that’s reminding you of Orange Goblin. He can pull off all of these vocal styles, and while variation is never a bad thing and there should always be a time and place for experimenting, using different styles on one record, both instrumentally and vocally, without it forming a clear consistensy, might make it hard for the band to be recognized. The album comes to an end with Armagheaddon (Get Schwifty) -yes, you get it-, a track that starts off two times and seems to be kind of a bonus. Jokes like these can be fun, but are often better kept inside the rehearsal room.
The artwork looks, to me, like a rough sketch, featuring the classical stoner image of the mammoth. This diverse sounding album would’ve deserved a more fitting and detailed cover, as a simplistic black-white-red image can hardly express all the colours the music brings along.
For three years, since their first EP Darken was released, the band has been working on this newbie. The release show will take place in BarBroos, Ghent, on friday the 2nd of November. The British Old Man Lizard will be taking care of the support! The music will be made available on Spotify, Bandcamp and Apple, and on CD if you want to support the band!
Release Date: November 2nd, 2018
Label: Independent
Tracklist:
1. Perished in Perihelion
2. Yawmuddin
3. Vegetarians are Biodegradable
4. Feeding the Ocean
5. Hold Your Mammoths
6. Armagheaddon (Get Schwifty)
