An attacked guitar fades in with a straight Rock n’ Roll riff before spacious strings reverberate around the listeners’ skulls. They give way into the abyss as an almighty Sludge riff threatens to swallow the world whole. ‘This Is Fine’ centres on this aforementioned riff and grinds in a cyclical manner around one’s speakers eviscerating the local surroundings. ‘This Is Fine’ is an understatement: as an opener to an EP, it is borderline excellent. Billy Myers III’s shouted vocals have the force necessary to level council flats, and come across as blissfully effortless to listen to.
Track two, ‘Turn Around Bright Eyes’, takes a far more groove laden approach that its predecessor. It stomps along with a hulking, stalking sense of foreboding, Myers III remaining a terrifying and imposing figure. CJ Orazi’s thunderous bass holds this song together. It feels so raucous and vibrant that it could all fall apart at any moment, but there is the humble four-string keeping a ferocious pace. The production choice to gate much of the record actually pays off; the gated triplets near the track’s end have an almost sub-drop quality to them, turning the impact from a punch to a sledgehammer.
‘Burn It Down Lemon’ stands as a miniature epic within the EP with its nine-minute running time. In these nine minutes, The Glorious Rebellion does more than many bands manage in an album’s worth of material. The song starts as a rambunctious and visceral assault in the vein of, well, Vein, before slowing to a lumbering bounce. The instrumentation and delivery of the lyrics “Oh my God I’ve got a great big feeling, I’d be better off dead” are cheekily referential as the song emulates the very best of mid-nineties nu-Metal. Following this, the song breaks down into a chaotic, sludgy Slam barrage of horrific noise and riffs heavier than a bag of spanners on Jupiter.
The Glorious Rebellion latest EP is nothing short of brilliant – musically dextrous in all the right ways, concise and cohesively constructed and teeth-grittingly, head-bangingly visceral. It is a testosterone-fuelled ride that doesn’t care if you are enjoying yourself, it is here to destroy all in its wake. After hearing this, a full-length album of material feels like an intrinsic necessity. The Sludge is primordial and is waiting to give birth to a monster.
8 / 10
SAM SAVIGNY