Album Review: Sky Pig, It Thrives in Darkness
The shape of sludge to come, one hopes. It Thrives in Darkess is the follow-up to Sky Pig‘s impressive 2020 four-songer EP, Hell is Inside You, issued through Forbidden Place Records, and it charts a course forward for dirt-coated heavy that feels particularly bold for being the band’s first album. The apparently-need-a-drummer Sacramento, California, two-piece of Rob Sneddon (guitar/vocals) and Jude Croxford (bass) — Chelsea Wright plays drums on the recording — cast an ambient impression over the course of their six-track/41-minute debut full-length, with echoing vocals and fluid loud/quiet transitions that make their more subdued stretches not an aside from the more weighted shove, but actually part of the proceedings and buildups. This distinguishes them in both atmospheric sludge and post-metal, and though they’re leaned more toward the former than the latter, they further draw on psychedelia, drone of various sorts, and a range of other styles.
Their methods might be likened to Neurosis, YOB or even younger Kylesa on paper, but these comparisons all fall short in capturing the full breadth of Sky Pig‘s output here. Throwing elbows all the while and having absorbed the knowledge of what worked on the prior short release, It Thrives in Darkness harness individualism from familiar murk, extend their grim aesthetic to the Droned Artworks cover art and twist listener expectation to suit their progression, so that whether it’s the watery clean vocals topping the quiet-but-tense drums in the verse of “Motionless” — calling out Black Sabbath‘s “Black Sabbath” without actually calling it out before surging into a shouted chorus — or the intense crunch that arises from the long build in the second half of the penultimate “In Light of Your Death,” they are able to do what they want when they want by simply doing it.
If it’s post-metal — and I’m not convinced it is, at least not entirely — it is a decisively American take, feeling more gut-born than hyper-cerebral in its roots despite a clear plan at work across its span that lets each half of the tracklisting start with a song about half the length of what follows. That is, on side A, the record launches with “State of Anger,” a rawer push that’s heavy enough to be called lumber and is immediate and intense in a way that becomes more a tool in the band’s shed than the sum total of what they can do, but is striking at the outset nonetheless, and telling in the echoing reach of Sneddon‘s solo of some of the swirling underpinnings that will show themselves throughout, as well as a touch of noise rock in the later groove.
But there’s less of a break than a rearing-back, and that’s a distinguishing feature that allows the subsequent “Larva” and side A capper “Motionless” to expand the context of the album as a whole in an organic-feeling way. I wouldn’t call it subtle perhaps because there’s so much tonal grit involved and when It Thrives in Darkness hits hard it feels like it’s leaving dents in the skull, but it is emblematic of a considered presentation just the same. Side B works similarly, with “Sinning Time” picking up from a second of silence with a persistent chug, a vocal-drone chant verse and shoutier tension offset, broader-feeling but shorter solo and consuming, head-down wrenching that never seems to fully let go in the drums, despite the roll that emerges in the last of its four and a half minutes, leaving a residually-heavy quiet from which the mellow and otherworldly-weirdo-effected guitar intro of “In Light of Your Death” takes hold.
Surrounding these shorter works, pieces like “Larva” — on which the returning Patrick Hills, who also engineered, mixed and mastered at Sacramento’s seemingly aptly-named Earthtone Studios, adds Mellotron in the midsection break to help set up the mellow, plotted guitar solo that follows before the crushing resumes — and the 9:47 longest-song/finale “It Thrives in Darkness” are likewise graceful and pummeling. “Motionless” begins with a stretch of standalone guitar in proto-YOB style that transitions smoothly into its full-toned thud but maintains the earlier contemplative vibe in its verse (which, if there isn’t more Mellotron there, sure has something that sounds like one), and seems to up the back-and-forth quotient in its volume trades, but never loses the pattern in doing so or comes across as confused about where it’s ultimately going.
In contrast, “In Light of Your Death” proves out a middle-ground for the extremes in “Motionless,” mean enough by the time it’s done, to be sure, but adding a deep-mixed melodic layer of either guitar or keys in its later reaches before the solo hits just past the six-minute mark and gives over to the last swell of riff-led volume, and those kinds of atmospheric noises do much to add to a spirit if not of improvisation than at very least of openness to experiment outside the normal confines of genre — to screw with their own sound, essentially, and follow through on ideas that end up enriching it significantly. The subsequent title-track is no less mindful as it layers vocals over the drifting passage that ends its first half, sparse-feeling guitar, complementing bass and far-off drums all lurking and waiting for the next moment to strike as an effective stop and start brings the louder line of guitar to announce the next round of churn to come.
They’ll cycle through again in that title-track before it’s done, with the drums more at the forefront, mix-wise, resulting in a kind of catharsis of reeling swing before the last push, and It Thrives in Darkness culminates with a deep-breath last shout and final crash that feels somehow suitably unceremonial given the dug-in passages before. Like much of the record, that ending makes a great strength of its lack of pretense, as both the production and the songwriting itself come through with due anguish and a focus on natural tone and rawness of its echoing shouts and plods rather than attempting any kind of stateliness this first time out.
Again, this works only in Sky Pig‘s favor, as even their very moniker seems to gnash teeth on an existential level. I do not know what their plans are in terms of touring or composing — It Thrives in Darkness was recorded between 2021 and 2022, so they had time to work on it and flesh it out, to be sure — but it marks a significant arrival in how it brings together often divergent underground styles and creates something fresh (if rotted-sounding) from them. There are a lot of variables between here and there — not the least a drummer — but if they are able to find a solid lineup and really get out and deliver this cacophony to listeners in-person, they have a real chance to become something the US underground definitely needs in their willingness to bend and break the rules of genre. It’ll be two or three more records before that tale is told either way, but the potential here is massive in keeping with the music itself.
Sky Pig, It Thrives in Darkness (2022)
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Tags: California, Forbidden Place Records, It Thrives in Darkness, Sacramento, Sky Pig, Sky Pig It Thrives in Darkness
THIS is why I love the site. JJ you were writing about quitting last Friday and you owe us nothing at all, and this is an amazing album that I would have completely missed. Thank you for all of your hard work and putting great music in my ears daily.