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Review & EP Stream: Lowburn, Sleeping Giant

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[Click play above to stream Lowburn’s Sleeping Giant EP in full. It’s out Feb. 2 on Argonauta Records.]

With four tracks and four distinct takes between them, Lowburn‘s Sleeping Giant is an EP in the truest sense of the form. It is a formidable sampling of range within the sphere of heavy rock — especially for an outing half the duration of its predecessor — and even for those who experienced the Finnish four-piece’s 2015 full-length debut, Doomsayer, or any of their prior, shorter releases, it should make an impression with its efficiency and level of songcraft alike.

Delivering once again through Argonauta Records, the lineup of guitarist/vocalist Tomi Mykkänen (also Battlelore), guitarist Tommi Lintunen, bassist Miika Kokkola and drummer Henkka Vahvanen find their niche right on either side of the dividing line between heavy rock and more aggressive metal, and where a song like “Do Mi Ti” from the long-player had its element of grunge-style melody, even the melancholy closer here “Lost Control,” seems to have grown outward melodically from this impulse.

That’s an encouraging sign on a performance level, but what really distinguishes Sleeping Giant from Doomsayer or Lowburn‘s previous 2014 split with Church of Void or 2013 debut EP, Soaring High, is in the efficiency of the band’s work in executing the material. Whether it’s the forward charge of opener “All Life Long” or the more rolling groove of the subsequent “The Power it Holds” and “Sleeping Giant” itself — which, rest assured, awakes before it’s done — Lowburn do not spare a moment on Sleeping Giant, and they sound all the more assured coming off their debut of the kind of band they want to be and how they want to get where they’re going in terms of sound.

Interestingly, in doing so on Sleeping Giant, they start at more or less at the beginning. While there’s no question “All Life Long” gives Sleeping Giant a somewhat ironic launch with its full-boar energetic take, all-out from the drum lead-in through the sped-up Kyuss-style riffing that propels it through its four minutes to the burly delivery of Mykkänen, slowing only to catch its breath in the midsection before resuming its rush at the ending payoff. I’m not sure it’s the same recorded version — it’s close if not — but the song originates in 2013 and was initially released as a digital single around the time of Soaring High. Whether redone or not, the form is essentially the same, and it makes a somewhat sneakily appropriate lead-in for the three tracks that follow and expand the dynamic of the release overall.

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Lead guitar shines throughout “The Power it Holds,” which has plenty of room for soloing as it nears a seven-minute runtime, but it’s the slower, rolling groove that most stands the song out, and a better balance in the mix between the vocals and surrounding instruments that makes the tones sound larger and adds depth on the whole. Give the origin story of “All Life Long,” I’ll note that I don’t know when “The Power it Holds,” “Sleeping Giant” or closer “Lost Control” were recorded — they could well be from the same session; universe of infinite possibilities and all that — but in context they sound newer, more developed stylistically, and speak to that level of assuredness one can sense in Lowburn post-Doomsayer.

“Sleeping Giant” pushes this notion even further with a more immersive nod and a willingness to ride its groove that departs even further from “All Life Long” at the outset. Patience? Yeah, patience. It wasn’t entirely absent from Lowburn on Doomsayer by any means, but it serves the title-track particularly well and shifts smoothly into the low-key harmonies of “Lost Control” in a way that gives even this sampling-of-wares-style short release a sense of full-album flow.

Likewise, the closer’s subdued beginning feels very much like a mirror held up to the initial push of “All Life Long,” and in that draws attention once more to the growth undertaken on the part of Lowburn — not just to where they can write effective trades between verses and choruses without unneeded flourish or structural variance, but to where their material has evolved in range while holding onto that sense of purpose and drive regardless of the actual tempo in which they’re working. What their plans might be after this relatively quick offering, I don’t know, but the message comes through clearly in these tracks that while on the surface Lowburn‘s attack can seem at times to be more about boozy burl and dudely riffing that willful creative progression, there’s obviously plenty of both at play in their sound.

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