In case you didn’t see it, the benevolent soul known as Ollie from Grifter put a post in the news forum about kickass UK bands worth checking out. He’s got some winners in there for sure, his own band among them, but a name that stood out to me was that of Welsh instrumental foursome Thorun, who’d been in touch recently about their (relatively) new EP, Chorus of Giants. Self-released back toward the end of last year and recorded completely live, the six tracks of Thorun‘s second EP display thick tones and lofty grooves, with a bit of ’70s influence lurking beneath the surface of their modern doomly vibing.

Chorus of Giants is actually pretty diverse once you get to the meat of it. The charmingly titled “Hipster Circle Pit” seems to toy with post-metallic progressivism in the guitar while the bass and Mike Johnson‘s drums keep the motion straightforward, and were it not for the monstrous low end coming from six-stringers Keeran Williams and Jonny Evans and bassist Neal Palmer, the earlier “Ivan the Terrible” might be genuine boogie rock. Whatever dynamics might be sacrificed in the singularity of tone, however, are more than accounted for in Chorus of Giants‘ live feel and the interplay among the musicians. It’s thick, and it moves like something thick, but there’s a sense of melody to be found as well and it doesn’t lose sight of the riffs leading its way.

A little under two minutes of noise in “Dark Ocean Song” paves the way for the slow build of the title-track, Palmer‘s bass providing the foundation, and “God Particle” might have the collection’s most solid groove. In any case, I thought the tracks were worth checking out, even though it’s been available for a while at this point. Thorun have downloads available at their Bandcamp page, and they’re on Thee Facebooks if you want to drop a line. They’ve also got a nifty website with a color scheme that looks awfully familiar. Here’s the entirety of Chorus of Giants, just for kicks:

Tags: Thorun, UK, Unsigned bands, Wales

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 at 5:06 pm and is filed under On the Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.