AN NCS PREMIERE: THE LUMBERJACK FEEDBACK — “THERAPY”

 

Two drummers, a pair of guitarists, a bass player, and no human voice at all. That’s the line-up of The Lumberjack Feedback, a group from the north of France whose motto is “Loud and Low”. Mere Mortals is the name of their new album, which follows by three years their impressive full-length debut, Blackened Visions, and what we have for you today is the crusher that opens the new record, a song named “Therapy“.

Deadlight Entertainment, which will release the album on April 26th, describes the music as “a hypnotizing, mesmerizing soundtrack to the apocalypse”, a “deep droning bass and primitive twin percussions as a roaring low-end thunder, ridden by dark melodies crafted by a pair of guitarists like silver surfers riding a tsunami” — “a weak beauty topping a tornado of devastating primal elements”.

I usually prefer to come up with my own linguistic formulations (and I will here, too), but I thought those were some nice turns of phrase, and they have the added advantage of being accurate.

 

 

“Therapy” is an enormous bone-breaker and head-mover, but also an engine for the generation of ominous and harrowing atmospherics. The stage is set by massive drum pounding, a growling bass tone, and a moaning lead, and then the melody opens up into a guitar harmony that’s both foreboding and radiant.

One might call the music a form of instrumental sludge/doom, but this song doesn’t drag. It does have narcotic qualities, but the work of the two drummers and the bassist is so vibrantly destructive, so dynamic and physically compulsive, that zoning out isn’t in the cards. The twin-guitar assault is also intense. As the rhythmic patterns change, those two create dismal, wailing melodies, as well as sequences that flicker and pulse.

In a brief interlude, ethereal notes ring out as the drummers clatter and boom, and when the full band join in again, and the volume goes way up, a growing sense of desperation comes through in the guitarists’ emanations. When the pace slows near the end, the song becomes an order of magnitude heavier and more harrowing, generating a vision of calamitous doom and crushing despair; the final distorted notes ring out like the last groans of a dying civilization.

 

Deadlight Entertainment will release Mere Mortals on vinyl, CD, and tape, along with a variety of bundles. For further info about the record (which features cover art by Samantha Muljat​), and to pre-order it, check the links below.

And for those within reach of Lille, France, The Lumberjack Feedback will play a free album release show at Le Bistrot de St So on April 19th, where they’ll be supported by Fiend and Barque (for more info, go here).

PRE-ORDER:
http://www.deadlight.fr/store
https://deadlight.bandcamp.com/album/mere-mortals

THE LUMBERJACK FEEDBACK:
http://www.thelumberjackfeedback.com/
https://www.facebook.com/thelumberjackfeedbackband