Album Premiere & Review: Jointhugger, Surrounded by Vultures
[Click play above to stream Jointhugger’s Surrounded by Vultures in full. Album is out on Halloween on Majestic Mountain Records and can be preordered here.]
Earlier this year, Norwegian heavybringers released the single-song EP Reaper Season (review here) both as their first offering through Majestic Mountain Records and the quick-turnaround follow-up to their 2020 debut, I Am No One (review here). The message was clear: “Expect us.”
In the somehow-endless-but-actually-not-all-that-long stretch of time since I Am No One first surfaced, the band’s reputation for immersive riffery has grown significantly, even as they’ve been largely unable to perform live. With the five-song/42-minute Surrounded by Vultures, guitarist/vocalist Nico Munkvold and bassist Tore Pedersen worked with no fewer than three drummers owing to a poorly timed studio mishap, with Daniel Theobald playing on “Midnight,” original drummer Øyvind Nordrum Brattås sitting in for “The Calm,” “Delysid Rex” and opener “In Dire Need of Fire Ch. 2,” and Munkvold himself on “Empty Space.” Tracks were recorded, then lost, and in the meantime, Theobald had left the band, eventually to be replaced by Saint Karloff‘s Adam Suleiman.
That Suleiman doesn’t appear on Surrounded by Vultures is telling in itself. Jointhugger, however they may moderate their tempos at times, are functioning with an expressive urgency. It is not a coincidence that they record live — Munkvold and Hrafn Helgason produced at Stone Bone Cross Studio, Haldor Grunberg at Satanic Audio mixed/mastered — and it is not happenstance that they come into their second full-length with momentum on their side. Their material rumbles and moves with deceptive purposefulness. That is to say, they sound languid, proffering lazy-hazy grooves with modern weedian largesse, but listen to the running guitar and shove in the second third of “Midnight” or the proggy buildup after six minutes into “In Dire Need of Fire Ch. 2” — an answer back to the leadoff from I Am No One and part of a reported trilogy; one hopes they record a special version of all three pieces together when the time comes — and the story becomes more complex. Likewise, “Empty Space” seems to trade out post-Monolord crush for Graveyard-style melancholic boogie, underscored still by Pedersen‘s righteous bass tone but patient as it moves through its shifts in volume and impact.
In the raw listening experience, it is easy enough to get lost in Surrounded by Vultures, to give over to the unifying nod that seems to pervade as one piece moves into the next despite the changes within and between. I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with that and I’m not sure it goes against the band’s intent that that should happen — there’s a clear desire to connect with an audience here, otherwise the songs wouldn’t feel so complete and they might’ve waited until the permanent drummer was settled in before re-recording parts — but it does somewhat negate the statement Jointhugger are making with the album, which is that as a band their interest is in more than just pummeling and bludgeoning those in their path with riff after riff. Surrounded by Vultures has plenty of riffs — if you’ve got a quota, don’t worry — but even in the outright fullness of “Delysid Rex,” which one assumes was titled in honor of Acid King, there’s nuance to be found in how the lead guitar and bass collide and join together for quick transitional runs (thinking around the six-minute mark) or just how prominent the bassline becomes as the central grounding element, building on what “Empty Space” prior seemed to establish as the tonal modus.
Moving from “In Dire Need of Fire Ch. 2” — which opens with some sparse ambient tones ahead of the entry of Munkvold‘s echoing guitar noodles; kudos to the band for not outright including vulture calls while still evoking them — through the easy-rolling first half of “Midnight” and into the surge that follows, there’s a dynamic being laid out that grows in concert with the unfolding of the album itself, such that even “Midnight”‘s downer lyrics can’t hold back the soaring of its bluesy, channel-switching solo, both of which use the lumbering behind as a foundation from which to push outward. That “Empty Space” serves as the centerpiece, moving that blues sensibility from the track prior to the forefront and setting wistfulness and sheer sonic heft against each other to a fascinating and effective degree, is also telling of Jointhugger‘s willful stylistic growth. They’re active in that process, from the songwriting and performance to Munkvold serving as co-producer.
Certainly Jointhugger, whether a duo or trio on any given song, aren’t the first to employ heavy blues as an aesthetic home base — see also: Black Sabbath — but in kind with an increased range in their craft, so too does the band’s performance feel more confident. This is particularly true of Munkvold‘s vocals, which come across as more comfortable expressing an emotional range and proffer memorable choruses in “Delysid Rex” and closer “The Calm,” which speeds up the shuffle of “Empty Space” to a more riotous point, what would otherwise be the stuff of vintage ’70s-ish heavy reborn in a more doomed context. “The Calm,” after feeling so unleashed, manages a return to its verse and chorus — again one hears Pedersen bringing that crucial heaviness to their sound — and departs from there once more, and the turns are smooth, the chemistry feels locked in, the final hits well earned and the residual feedback reminiscent of the stage before the amps are clicked off.
Surrounded by Vultures, among its other achievements, creates a feeling of space that the band often leave at least partially open. This not only lets the ‘big’ parts sound bigger, but conveys an isolated perspective that gives the reverb/echoes that much more atmosphere, enhancing the mood and emotional heft if not always the superficial intensity of the moment. The message — to expect them — is largely unchanged from I Am No One and Reaper Season, but Surrounded by Vultures adds due complexity to that expectation. The advent of Jointhugger over the last year-plus has been a bright spot in a largely dark time. These songs find them continuing to move forward at their own pace toward yet-unknown ends. With Suleiman factored into the lineup for their next offering and more change inevitably in front of them, may their exploration persist unabated.
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