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Review: 'Henry Blacker'
'Summer Tombs'   

-  Album: 'Summer Tombs' -  Label: 'Riot Season'
-  Genre: 'Rock' -  Release Date: '28th April 2015'

Our Rating:
The trio may hail from Somerset, in the cider-making southern corner of England, but they owe more to the postindustrial wastelands of Seattle in the late 80s / early 90s. The album art marks a clear link to its predecessor, ‘Hungry Dogs Will Eat Dirty Puddings’, and its boldness is a fair indication of the uncluttered, in-yer-face sonic attack it houses.

The vocals on gritty stoner-grunge opener ‘Cold Laking’ are drawly, almost mumbled. It’s not the sound of slackerdom, but the numbness of exisence. And then it all bursts into a snarling, inhuman fury that’ll make you sit up and shudder. If ‘Million Acre Fire’ rocks a more ‘classic’ vibe in the formation of its core riff, it’s executed with a fury that batters rock history into oblivion. ‘The Grain’ nags and chews away at a noodly lead guitar line paired with a gloriously gritty riff.

Thus far, I’ve managed to avoid he ‘N’ word, mostly because Henry Blacker may be grungy, but don’t really evoke that other power trio: however, the pounding ‘The Plague’ does most keenly call to mind ‘Bleach’ era Nirvana, and also the metal-edged heft of Tad infused with the stoner grind of Queens of the Stone Age. Only, I’d argue that Henry Blacker to it better, because they’re grass roots, hacking it out in a barn somewhere for the sheer hell of it. Lyrically, it’s pretty heavy, too, ranging from the dark to the weird and vaguely twisted.

The seven-minute title track cracks and groans under its own weight, the overloading guitars sounding like the sound desk’s about to give out and the amps about to blow before it surges to the close.

Darker, more dangerous-sounding than ‘Hungry Dogs’, ‘Summer Tombs’ still has more than enough groove to carry it through its 29 minute running time. But make no mistake, what it lacks in duration is more than compensated in intensity.

Henry Blacker Online
  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Henry Blacker - Summer Tombs