War Iron, The Faceless Sea: Test Your Mettle
More often than not, the rule with sludge is if it’s slow and screamy, you compare it to EyeHateGod. If the band is from the UK, as is the Northern Irish four-piece War Iron, you might throw Iron Monkey into the mix, largely for the same reasons. War Iron’s nautically-themed, self-released two-song full-length, The Faceless Sea, has more in common with The Slomatics and Conan (at least tonally), however, than the influential sludge of yore, tapping into ultra-low end heaviness with two basses in place of guitar and cutting through the rumbling morass with vicious, frothing screams. Throughout “Inch Cape” (12:09) and “Face the Sea” (20:50), images come to mind of a more metal-minded Weedeater or even Bongzilla, but War Iron’s perspective seems more hellish than weedian, and the atmosphere they create is murky enough to earn its sea-based thematic. They’re certainly not the first band to write heavy songs about the ocean or dying therein or sailing thereupon, but for nearly every second of The Faceless Sea, War Iron make it apparent that nothing else would work quite as well in solidifying the execution of the record. Even in the breaks one might call respite if there was actually any letup in the density of the atmosphere – even their air is heavy – War Iron remain consistent in the dreary lumbering of these two songs.
About three and a half minutes into its 12, “Inch Cape” does ignite the pace somewhat, but even then, the thickness of Ross and Dave’s two basses and Baggy’s layered screams and death growls make it seem like there’s no escape. Drummer Marty has his work cut out for him in basically anchoring these songs on his own, since it’s not like one bass is part of the rhythm section and the other is filling the role of a lead guitar. As “Inch Cape” reemerges at its relative crawl, the basses are wide open, holding chords and leaving it solely to the drums to fulfill the life-raft role. Light rumbling under sampled speech takes the place of a verse, but even though at about eight minutes in, the song is effectively over, the perpetual amp noise/droning and sea noises that take hold prove oppressive as well as they lead into the all-at-once slam of “Face the Sea”’s opening. The second of the two cuts on The Faceless Sea is more diverse sonically – at more than eight minutes longer than its predecessor, it has room to be – though Baggy’s screaming offers no let up amid the mega-heavy bass, which, by the time the song is two minutes in, sounds like it’s just trying to blow whatever speakers it’s coming from. Some call and response shouts/screams ensue, and the basses and Marty’s drums line up for an overarching groove, but I’m not sure even that’s as striking as how heavy the whole affect is. That is to say, even when War Iron lays into a killer doom plod, it’s less the groove itself that hits you than the heaviness of it, the thickened tones from Ross and Dave. God damn it, that’s heavy.
And just to be perfectly clear about it, War Iron’s heaviness as it’s presented on The Faceless Sea is enough to carry the album. As “Face the Sea” passes its halfway point, the band moves into arguably their most active stretch on the whole record, and Baggy lets loose his most abrasive, dry-throated screams yet. This leads the way into a build and doomed forward charge that ends the album with a payoff signified more by tempo shift than sonic change. Because War Iron’s sound is so based in its low end, there’s not much they can really do on The Faceless Sea to get away from it. In this way, listening to the end of “Face the Sea” that unfolds following a horrifically screamed break, it’s almost like Ross and Dave are being swallowed whole by their own instruments, but even though the variety has to come from changes in timing, the band does well in conveying some sense of progression using those means. Were there a third or fourth track of equal proportion to these two, I don’t know if the approach would hold up, but it’s moot since it does here and “Face the Sea” has more going on than just riffs and screams, so War Iron has something genuine to work from next time around and something to stand up to the novelty of two basses. The Faceless Sea is unrelentingly heavy and adds War Iron to the list of effective dealers of new school doom and sludge aural punishment.
Might be of interest to some, Marty is the new Slomatics drummer. He’ll carry on rocking with War Iron as normal.
I believe this war iron EP will also be getting a limited 12″ release in the next few weeks.