This album is a feat from the Hertfordshire, UK, band. Praetorian takes the Sludge metal music into blackened realms, adding a touch of Screamo and guttural growls. Energetic, angry, vibrant, and heavy riff-based from musicians at the peak of their career.
As the first song races forward, you wonder if the band can keep the song’s promise throughout a whole album. They are seasoned musicians in a band that has existed since 2015 and has released promising EPs throughout, adding numerous live performances. But to keep the listener engaged through a whole full-length as this debut is another challenge.
”Fear & Loathing In Stevenage” opens the album with screeching guitars with distorted sounds paving the way to frenetic drumming, energetic bass grooves, sharp edge riffs, and screaming vocals. The riffs are extremely intricate as they race forward and the bass heaves and sinks, and somewhere in this dense, fast musical race, there are deep guttural growls. The music seems raw and unrefined, which, obviously, it is not. This is a band with immense creativity, taking Sludge into blackened sonics with full-fledged Screamo vocals in a kind of harmony with the guttural growls.
The somber opening of the second one, ”Chain Of Dead Command” is an intriguing contrast to the first track: a clear guitar complete with echo effects, then the drums kick-start the next part and the tangled heavy riffs drive the song forward upon the foundation laid out by the rhythm section. In this song, you already face the bass lines roll as they will throughout the album. Intended or not, they groove and rumble as an echo of what Geezer Butler introduced six decades ago, following the riffing expanding guitar rather than staying in the back, keeping the rhythm. This results in the grooves becoming a dynamic part as the guitar goes heavier and speeds forward pushed by relentless drumming. There is an immense power in the way the velocity of the song is constructed as it leaps forward with heavy bursts and dips into low-end tremolos where the engaging Screamo vocals shift between screams and guttural growls and toward a part that is contrasted with dreamy clean vocals.
Rushing forward with ”Gutwrenching”, that opens with thumbing hits on the low-end floor drums and the guitar glides in with fuzzy tremolos surging with the constant hits on the drums before a shift dives into the Screamo Blackened Sludge and runs onward with the thumping bass heaving the musical pace. The riffs drag the song into heavier sonics and the bass follows and brings the song to a fading end. It is just like the title says, “gutwrenching”. And a bit more.
”Tombs Of The Blind Dregs” opens with a breather as the song arrives at a leisure pace after clean guitars emerge with the bass at the bottom making foreboding sounds contrasting the high-pitched strumming guitar. Then the song turns around with a swirling fuzzy tremolo guitar shooting the sonics forward with intricate patterns from the bass guitar. In this song, the vocalist shows his range as vocals shift into clean high-pitched chords as the riff-based music surges forward, heavier than before. You can hear a whiff of doomy sonics as the song descends and then pans out with a shimmering, strumming clean guitar.
After a Darkwave discordant intermezzo with foreboding Industrial sound effects to underline the track´s title, ”Dormant Psychosis”, there is another seriatim of hefty songs hurtling with high velocity raging forward, first with ”Remnants Of Head”: A shrieking guitar opens the song while the drums set the pace; it fuses into a hefty soundscape bringing the song forward to the vocals interchanging between clean-sung and energetic screamo vocals. The riff-based music engages the different vocals as they dance with each other, each vocal mode changing the themes with the type of vocals, heavier prolonged riffs for the cleaner with subtle shifts when the vocals are in screamo mode. It is so impeccably well done and makes the song diverse and engaging in its ever-changing dense flow.
Next up ”Pylon Cult” where the guitar opens the song with bursts from the drums and soars with weightlessness before it melts together to support the angry vocals carried by the relentless bass guitar lifting the song forward to a discordant part with screams and growls in a kind of harmony with eruptions of various fast guitar lines as the vocals vary between screams and growls. Towards the end, the song dives into the deepest end of heavy music.
”Burly Haemorrhoid” is the album´s grand finale with ever-changing tempos and effects, vocals and glimmering cymbals. It is a melodic riff-based fast song. As the guitar pulls out a diverse solo, the bass lifts taking the lead until the song once more changes into a flow of heavy riffs broken by bursts of chugging guitars and led by powerful bass grooves. The drums hit fast, using the cymbals for effect. The flow of the guitar shows subtle variations as the vocals intersperse angry with desperate howls and then, when the song becomes heavier, dip into guttural growls before melting back to its fast flow, energetic and utterly engaging with the constant change in the surge of music. There is release to be found in the relentless dense chuggs when the guitar breaks out in a flux of tremolos and is broken off by a shouting choir before the music dives heavier with prolonged riffs upon the deep bass lines. Toward the end, the music is at its most monolithic, immersing guttural growls and the screams. The music becomes ever-slower until the album ends in statics.
Yes, they managed what the first track intended: a dense, heavy, fast, engaging, and textured Blackened Sludge full-length album. It is impressively well done by musicians in full control of how they want to forge their own path in the murky sonics of Sludge Metal.
