sludge metal / stoner rock
The Mound Builders is an album to be released by the eponymous American band from Indiana, in January 18, 2019, by Failure Records and Tapes. With eight tracks – Torchbearer, Hair of the Dogma, Separated From Youth, Acid Slugs, Star City Massacre, Regolith, Broken Pillars and Vanished Frontier –, this veteran sludge metal group returns after seven years from their previous work, their debut album, Strangers in a Strange Land. With enough voracity, strength and fury to reverberate for over a decade the dense restlessness of their aggressive and direct, but expressive and methodic sound, The Mound Builders seems eager to defeat all the grim shadows that may appear in their way. With savage, rude and pungent guitar lines, the sound of the band can be described as a hostile drive through the desert, with enough fuel to change the driveway in reverse.
Although the beginning seems promising, and the interesting, precise incursions the band does in more stoner musical terrain is definitely refreshing, dynamic and musically stimulating, the group eventually falls in a series of serious, pervasive and mediocre clichés, that rapidly makes their music sound too inadvertently ordinary and predictable. As the album evolves, but the music sound all the same, you eventually give up, and loses the patience.
The band has an artistic vitality, and solid musical principles, as they let this fact transpire, in their best moments. But unfortunately, this is not enough for the album to sustain itself throughout its entire run. On this work, The Mound Builders lose their track on originality, creativity and purpose too soon. As a matter of fact, after just a few minutes into the album, it’s difficult to find a musical passage that is decent or good enough to be memorable.
For its entire run, the album seems a bad collage of stoner and sludge metal clichés. Not a single moment of original sonorous rapture can be heard. What can be written favorably about them is that the crossover in their genres of choice are definitely skilled. The “arid” feeling concerning their music seems genuine too. They have passion and a virulent, sincere aggressiveness, but sadly, this is lost in a vast amount of sonorous sameness and vagueness, that doesn’t have any moment capable of standing out. This album is very generic, and will hardly impress enthusiasts of the genre.
Wagner
Although the beginning seems promising, and the interesting, precise incursions the band does in more stoner musical terrain is definitely refreshing, dynamic and musically stimulating, the group eventually falls in a series of serious, pervasive and mediocre clichés, that rapidly makes their music sound too inadvertently ordinary and predictable. As the album evolves, but the music sound all the same, you eventually give up, and loses the patience.
The band has an artistic vitality, and solid musical principles, as they let this fact transpire, in their best moments. But unfortunately, this is not enough for the album to sustain itself throughout its entire run. On this work, The Mound Builders lose their track on originality, creativity and purpose too soon. As a matter of fact, after just a few minutes into the album, it’s difficult to find a musical passage that is decent or good enough to be memorable.
For its entire run, the album seems a bad collage of stoner and sludge metal clichés. Not a single moment of original sonorous rapture can be heard. What can be written favorably about them is that the crossover in their genres of choice are definitely skilled. The “arid” feeling concerning their music seems genuine too. They have passion and a virulent, sincere aggressiveness, but sadly, this is lost in a vast amount of sonorous sameness and vagueness, that doesn’t have any moment capable of standing out. This album is very generic, and will hardly impress enthusiasts of the genre.
Wagner
