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What the fuck is this? Melody? Oh my god, somebody must have looted Mouthus' tour van or something. I didn't get the email about it, but maybe we should start hitting pawn shops around the East Coast to see if any are selling a conspicuously large assortment of pedals. Previously any melodies were suitably hidden under multiple layers of abrasive, throbbing noise. Even though Loam was more stripped down than Mouthus, the listener was still hard pressed to pull out individual riffs. On Slow Globes, however, while the sound is still plenty noisy, it's toned down so much that you can actually hear Brian Sullivan's churning, trancy, 60s psych guitar. Hendrix and Floyd are just as big an influence as Branca - who knew? Fuck, you can even hear lyrics - granted not well enough to decipher the words, but well enough that you can tell there are words in some sort of language or another tossed in the middle of the standard Zen ohhms and ahhs. The album opens with the band's best rock song yet, "Storms." The guitar is powerful, playing a fast, repetitive riff that really drives the Floyd comparison home. "Toned down" probably wasn't a proper description above - the sound still reaches a maelstrom, with the distorted guitar slashing through walls of sound like a buzzing chainsaw through drywall. However, the guitar is in the forefront and grabs your ear immediately. While "Storms" is a shot of adrenaline, other songs make the "Slow" in the album's title seem appropriate. "This is My Snow" is a morphine drip mantra, sounding like it was recorded in a deep cave as the echoed-out vocals bellow out a mournful chant and the guitar plays a slow and steady progression, each chord a ray of heavily filtered-out sunlight, barely making it through to the band's subterranean headspace. While a lot of noise bands are getting by releasing indistinguishable recordings of live jams, each of these six songs are different experiences, and Slow Globes is Mouthus' most immediately rewarding album thus far.

Mouthus at Amazon & Insound