Veterans of Seventh Rule Recordings, Chicago heavy hitters Sweet Cobra make their Black Market Activities debut with the surprisingly melodic Mercy, an album that also serves as epitaph for guitarist Mat Arluck, who succumbed to cancer in 2009. Mercy, recorded by the ubiquitous Sanford Parker at Volume Studios in Chicago, features Arluck’s last studio performances with the band, giving the record an emotional context completely outside of the music – put to tape in the early part of last year even as Sweet Cobra released the stopgap Bottom Feeder EP, comprised of leftover cuts from 2007’s Forever full-length – but nonetheless inseparable from it.

Likening them to Seattle merchants Akimbo, what I’ve always enjoyed most in Sweet Cobra’s work has been the reckless bombast of it, like the hardcore kids grew up a little and wanted something thicker but no less angry. On Forever (reissued by Black Market in 2008) and the preceding Praise from 2004, Sweet Cobra touched on stoner riffage, but used it more as ploy to lure audiences into a false sense of security before pummeling them over the head with unhinged intensity and the feeling that at any moment the sound is going to manifest itself from out the speakers and actually kick your ass. On Mercy, they seem to show a little bit of just that, marrying neo-prog metal angularity with the branded Torche melodic vocal approach to hone their most accessible sound yet. And it’s not a fluke, they do it straight through the record, bassist Tim Remus employing a sub-melodic noise rock shout as the harshest vocal technique on the album on a song like the early-arriving title cut.

It certainly wasn’t what I expected to hear from Sweet Cobra, whom in the past I’ve placed in the category of “intimidatingly heavy.” Not that they’ve suddenly become singer-songwriters or anything, but when “Silvered” offers its plodding doom groove – drummer Jason Gagovski landing hard on the toms during sustained breaks in the guitars of Arluck and Robert Lanham, Jr. – setting up Remus for one of Mercy’s most melodic sections. Like Torche, they effectively balance their heaviness and “pop” sensibility, though between the two, Sweet Cobra leans far to the latter. Driving, catchy and upbeat though it may be, “Crusader” is also abrasive, and “Matriarch” which comes right before and leads directly into it hits the d-beat as though it were trying actively to fend off approaching commerciality. “Take that!” and so forth.

The closing trio of tracks sums up well the turns Sweet Cobra are making stylistically with Mercy. “Reinhold London” is the most memorable song on the album and also one of the heaviest. Gagovski’s bass and snare drum cut through the guitars and bass excellently thanks to a Kurt Ballou (Converge) mix, giving the listener something to grab onto amongst the frenetic goings on of the string section, and though Remus is (or perhaps “was” is better, since the album was recorded well over a year ago at this point and a lot can happen in that time) just beginning to develop as a melodic vocalist, he gives his best performances here and on “Sprague Dawley,” which is a fitting adrenaline-filled closer. With the speedy, aggressive 1:45 “Wounded Parade” between them, Mercy’s final movement proves also to be its best summary.

Sweet Cobra’s development is doubtless going to catch some loyal followers off-guard, but if you’ve been around the scene long enough to catch Sweet Cobra before now, you’re probably well aware that they’re not the only band going this route with their sound and it shouldn’t be too throwing in the long run. At its heart, Mercy is still viciously heavy, and if the rest means the band is/was starting to mature at the time of the recording, I’ll take it. One can only imagine how the loss of Arluck will affect them going forward, but with Mercy as a part of his legacy, there can be no question he helped Sweet Cobra become one of the creatively-vibrant Chicago scene’s most underrated bands. Recommended to fans and newcomers alike.

Sweet Cobra on MySpace

Black Market Activities

Tags: Black Market Activities, Chicago, Illinois, Sweet Cobra

This entry was posted on Friday, October 29th, 2010 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.