France’s sludge/doom instrumentalists The Lumberjack Feedback throw down the grooves in a bunch of steady and sturdy riffs that pummel their way into the depths of your psyche with remarkable ease. There’s nothing about this EP that isn’t impressive. All that lets it down is that it is an EP and not an album.

The first track, ‘A Whisper To The Thunder’ is, by no stretch of the imagination, a whisper at all. It’s more like a fart from a titan, such is its magnitude. The riffs are both melodic and crushing and the drums are colossal – and so they should be given that there are two drummers in the band. In almost direct opposition to the track’s primal intensity of its hypnotic rhythms and devastating riffs comes ‘The Dreamcatcher’. This track opens with a broad and more esoteric vista upon which The Lumberjack Feedback develop their apocalyptic aesthetic.

What’s most impressive about this release – and there is a lot to be impressed with – is how the band have worked to both combine their strengths and give each other enough space to colour each individual track with subtleties and nuances that make them so unique, particularly with the two drummers. And with the drone of the bass saturating the low end, the sound is just monstrous. The only issue here is that there are only two tracks. Both are incredible but they do leave you wanting more. And that can only be considered a good thing, right? Let’s just hope the album is this good.

7/10

Jason Guest

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