(Wil Cifer reviews Florida-based Hollow Leg‘s new compilation album Dust and Echoes (combining two 2024 EPs), which was released on June 13th by Third House Communications.)
The fact that guitarist Brent Lynch is the only member of Hollow Leg who was not from Bloodlet might lead you to think, this band is a continuation of the forerunners of dark hardcore’s legacy. That is not the case.
It’s respectable for the band to mark this as a new chapter rather than use the name of their previous project for the sake of recognition. This is truth in advertising as this band is much more metal, and in my best guesstimation, and the fact they are fellow Floridians, I can assume things changed as they started smoking a ton of weed which caused the shift in musical direction. The biggest change is that Scott’s vocals are still gruff, but come closer to a scowl-tinted croon than the hardcore roar that marked what he did in the late ’90s.
The riffs are less pounding and have some rock swagger to them, though more overt metal chugs power things and there’s less tendency to boogie. There is a lurking tension to songs like “Funeral Storms” that is very effective at setting the mood. More often than not, the songs are marked by a pretty hefty sludge punch with the drummer adding weight to their downtrodden stomp. It might remind you of early Mastodon.
They offer several shades of dark and heavy over the course of this album, while still allowing themselves room to weave more introspective moments such as the song “Holy Water” where the vocals are uttered in more of a hushed whisper, as the grungy guitar brings more haunting atmosphere to give off an Acid Bath-like vibe. Trippy guitar tones color the edge of “Last Tribe,” which is layered in a bong worshipping fashion that is not far removed from what Down does in many ways.”Bury Our Kings” works off a flowing rock groove, with the rasped snarl of the vocals giving it more bite. “Red Skies” has more of a moodier grunge feel lurking until things pick up on the verse.
“Ride the Wave Dig the Grave” lumbers in a more traditional manner, with the fact that the vocals continue to steer clear of the typical lumberjack bark helping to solidify their identity. This is one of the band’s strengths, as they are not devoted to paying homage to the tropes of any one sub-genre of metal and use all the sonic pieces they have collected on the way to create their own thing, despite sharing many qualities with what one might hear as the familiar swamp sludge sound, and made it their own in a powerful way, which brings the quality Bloodlet were known for into a whole new chapter for these guys.
If you were a Bloodlet fan, there is a similar unsettling darkness to the anger simmering in these songs that you can appreciate. This album would appeal to sludge fans who are open to expanding the bounds of the genre to include ’90s-influenced emotive rumbles with a healthy fetish for groove. Either way, it’s a fun listen that is a worthwhile investment of time.
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