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Nice
accomplished work what this Louisville, KY quartet is
offering as their first full-length. Not only in the
shape of fully gelled songs, but also in the way in
which the album evolves, develops and evolutions. Christhammer is the type of recording that deserves
serious financial backing. For independent standards
anyway. It surprises me that Stonecutters are releasing
this on their own when it rules way over most of the
stuff that gets released by the big indies.
Christhammer
has the grime, the attitude, the riffs and is wisely compact,
melodic and aggressive at the same time. It is totally effective
at presenting a band of skilled musicians who are never afraid
to mix it up or indulge. Because for every cool riff there is
here, the guys are only willing to offer them for a short couple of
minutes. Yeah, they have better ones under their sleeves.
When I read
that Stonecutters plays sludge I expected something else. That’s
not the wrong tag, but it isn’t the only one. Never have I seen
a sludge band playing it up in such a flexible way. The first
four songs of Christhammer roll off their tongues. Figuratively.
The riffs and its rhythms move swiftly, from the soft dwindling
of “Muerta” to the groovy death rock of the title track with its
rambunctious communal chorus and the guitar centric “I, Wurdulak”,
where the Stonecutters riff and riff, then they bark and then
they riff some more. I am not a fan of groove, but I have only
heard one album that sludge grooves as well as Christhammer and
it was called When the Kite String Pops, by yeah, Acid Bath.
What’s
cooler about Stonecutters is that they aren’t afraid to present
themselves as a guitar band. Sludge and doom bands seem too
focused in being monochromatic these days. Like I said before,
these guys aren’t totally sludge, or totally stoner or grim
doomsters, instead their songs depart from each sub genre only
to grow into dynamic animals, with cool variety and plenty of
solos. The vocals are legible growls. Organic screams that match
to the evolutionary guitars of “X’s for Eyes” makes me think of
what Baroness could have been had they never taken a shower.
This is solid from beginning to end.
MySpace
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