I quite liked the debut album from these Northern Ontario rockers, which reminded me of Mastodon and Baroness before both bands sold out. These guys are easily the heaviest thing to come out of Orillia since… OK, I got nothing on that one.
Anyhoo, album number two starts off in somewhat unfamiliar fashion, with “A Familiar Face” sounding bright, airy, and even a little funky with some shimmering dual leads. Alas, ’tis but an instrumental intro. “Lockstep” gets things off to a proper, thrashing start, while incorporating some solid sludgy breakdowns. “Black Brubeck” takes a more melodic approach, even incorporating a couple lines of banjo. I suppose they’ve got banjos in abundance up in Orillia. Mind you, this ain’t some bro-country tune—it’s much more akin to mid-paced Megadeth.
“God Sized Shadow” looms large with some ominous, doomy riffs off the bat—though again, it’s more of a mid-paced chugger, this time à la Crowbar, before bursting out into a brief black-metal barrage toward the end. And while “Hideous Appetites” was actually the name of their first album, the song of the same name appears here on its successor, a pulsating pounder complete with doomy downstrokes and some funky bass lines. While its moniker might be a nod to the past, musically, it really shows how far they’ve come.
