Monday, July 22, 2013

... ROZAMOV "Of Gods and Flesh" (EP Review)

Freshly released earlier this month, "Of Gods and Flesh" is the new EP from Boston's raging quatuor ROZAMOV; this one comes after a very promising 1st (self-titled) released about one year ago...

Again available as digital and CD  but this time with 4 songs (one more) and a total length of nearly 20 minutes (5 mns more, pretty logical considering this is the average length of the songs !)... Perfectly enough to have a fair idea of their development through another DIY process, gain new fans (the band just did a successfull10 dates-tour playing with Jucifer, Admiral Browning, Venomin' James...) and possibly catch some labels attention for a next full 1st album.

To describe those new songs easily (as you know I'm not really able to enter in technical details with nice effective words) I'd say that ROZAMOV not only gained in consistency and thickness but also a lot in aggressivity, not to say brutality at times ("Empty sky" and its shredding blastbeats - short but breaking your neck!). This could lead to the conclusion that here the band has left a great part of its Stoner influences behind the 1st steps of their young history, sure there's still some overtones but they would be more to found on the doomier parts through slow plodding breaks ("Famine" and "Shadow of the Vulture") with rumbling bass and sharp haunting chords or hints of psychedelic heaviness (pretty rare)...


Is that the production assumed this time AJ Peters (Battilus, Olde Grave, Summoner) ? Not only of course, this is the bands compositions who guide for the most part but on this new EP the sound is much more dense, compared to the debut with Clay from Black Pyramid's on command. The overall is clearly rawer and more straight, this is ultimately killer Sludge with a nice Metallic HC dynamic (the song "Of Gods and Flesh") ! 

Except this title track, each song is still filled with atmospheres and deepness  though, jut try the infectious main riff of "Empty Sky" !  There's again a very important work on vocals - which I already underlined last year, I dug the backing vocals of Tom on the 1st EP and there's more to crave for on that front here, not just particularly backing vocals, but more in his splitting of the lead vocals with Matt (who remains the -excellent- main vocalist though).

EVERYTHING's on GREEN for this next full-length to come out in ultimate conditions; if not with a striking identity yet (but there's a great improvement over the debut) we've got here a band full of force, tightness and a modern dynamic approach of Sludge in the good sense of the term (not too dripping, vicious and dirty but no Post anything to add...). This one is a fucking good piece of heaviness and unrelenting power !!! 


https://www.facebook.com/Rozamov

No comments:

Post a Comment