By Jason Wellwood
Montreal’s The Great Sabatini are looking to make 2011 a big year. They’ll be recording the follow up to 2009’s Sad Parade of Yesterday’s full length after doing a month long North American tour but first they’ll be releasing this 7” on their own Sludge Hummer Records. If you’re looking for grind inflected sludge metal, with a love for noise, this is the band for you. Something you will notice right from the beginning however, is that The Great Sabatini are not interested in making their music quite that simple. Unlike many 7” releases, Napoleon Sodomite doesn’t feel like the band threw on a few outtakes just to be able to say they put out a 7”. This is quality beginning to end.
Title track ‘Napoleon Sodomite’ is not only a heavy, throat stripping song it’s also very catchy and easy to pick up the melody on. It will definitely have you nodding your head along, until you learn the lyrics. Then good luck with your throat after that as you try to sing along. ‘Helter Skeletor’ is almost a military march with foot stomping and hand clapping and what sounds to me like a banjo….this leads into the next instrumental ‘Trap Sequence’ which is more along the sludgier side of the band. The banjo from ‘Helter Skeletor’ is reprised at the end of ‘Trap Sequence’ leading you to the end of the 7”.
All too soon, the record is over and you’ll want to pick it up and play it again, and again. The joy of having the digital copy is that I’ve been able to just put it on repeat, however when the vinyl of Napoleon Sodomite became available, I ordeed my copy right away!
(Sludge Hummer)
