Hollow Leg Premiere Dust EP in Full; Out Friday
Floridian sludge metal mainstays Hollow Leg are set to self-release their new EP, Dust, this Friday, May 3, and with just 21 minutes at their disposal, there’s a palpable no-time-to-waste vibe as the four-piece dig into “Poison Bite” (video premiere here) in a tight encapsulation of the willful stylistic growth the band have undertaken since 2019’s Civilizations (review here), their most recent LP. Like a lot of what Hollow Leg have done since the tail end of the MySpace era, “Poison Bite” is a ripper.
It’s got a massive, rolling grove led by Brent Lynch‘s guitar, with due weight pushed through Tom Crowther‘s bass and the nod punctuated by John Stewart‘s drumming, and with vocalist Scott Angelacos finding a Matt Pike-y delivery somewhere between a shout and cleaner singing, with effects-laced backing in the chorus presumably from Lynch, as well as the condensed runtime, it also defies expectation in how it digs in. For a sound that remains plenty filthy, one hesitates to use words like “refined,” but on their own terms, Hollow Leg very much are that on Dust.
“Poison Bite” begins a salvo of three sub-four-minute cuts, with “Sick Days” adding a thrashier shove to its abiding nastiness, bringing the not-screamed backing vocals in the chorus closer to the front of the mix alongside Angelacos‘ harsh-throated gnashing, and EP centerpiece “Funeral Storms” hints toward patience as it moves toward its later solo and in its relatively restrained earlier verses. These aren’t the first short songs Hollow Leg have offered, by any means, but they’re presented with a maturity and confidence coinciding with an evolutionary drive that can’t be faked.
That is, they’ve always grown from one release to the next, and they still are, but that growth feels more directed toward specific ideas on Dust than it has in the past, and that’s part of how they’re developing at this point. While “Another Day Dying” feels sharp in its early riffing, the back end with sitar-sounding effects and a muddied-up kind of psychedelic flourish is a purposeful contrast and expansion of scope, and yeah, the brooding, mostly-clean-sung Southern heavy swamp atmosphere of closer “Holy Water” hits into heavier riffing at around two and a half minutes in, but it still carries the initial mood forward, pairing its partial departure with a consistency unto itself that underscores the crafted feel of the EP as a whole.
The notion of Dust as another step in Hollow Leg‘s ongoing progression undercuts some of how than manifests throughout the five songs included, but while they remain in no small part defined by the crash-and-bash aspects of their approach, it’s worth considering just how much they’ve found their place in sludge over their years, and how their balance between extremity and accessibility plays out in this material. Its malleable nature alone, the band’s emergent considerations of ambience alongside their entrenched rawness, would be enough even if the songs themselves didn’t remain so intentionally kickass as they do.
But among the messages Dust most clearly sends is that Hollow Leg aren’t done exploring this path they’re on, and one hopes that, whatever form their next round of discoveries might take upon release, they find ways to continue forward in melding influences from within and beyond their genre. Keep getting weirder, dudes. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
Enjoy the full EP stream below, followed by some perspective from the band courtesy of the PR wire and that “Poison Bite” video, links and the rest:
In the band’s own words: “We’re always writing and playing and working on new music is just what we do, always trying to build on our sound and make the next piece a more clearly defined vision than the last. We have such a wide range of musical and artistic influences that it’s challenging to wrangle them, but we try our best to work within the ‘Hollow Leg’ mainframe and pump out something different than what we’ve done before, but also something that’s still obviously Hollow Leg. Hollow Leg is about freedom though. That’s been the mantra since the first record and we’ve always stuck to that! It’s about pushing ourselves and finding ways to simultaneously party with Metallica, Steely Dan, EyeHateGod, Wu Tang Clan, Stevie Wonder, and Pink Floyd and it somehow makes sense to us!”
Tracklisting:
1. Poison Bite (3:34)
2. Sick Days (3:59)
3. Funeral Storms (3:47)
4. Another Day Dying (4:51)
5. Holy Water (5:46)
Hollow Leg is:
Scott Angelacos – vocals
Brent Lynch – guitar/backing vocals
Tom Crowther – bass
John Stewart – drums
