Neurot Recordings
All Access Rating: A-
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| Brothers Of The Sonic Cloth - Brother Of The Sonic Cloth 2015 |
Doyle's latest doom-metal project, featuring veteran bassist Peggy Doyle and drummer Dave French (The Anunnaki), is about to unveil Brother of the Sonic Cloth, the first recordings released by Tad Doyle in 15 years, and what a welcome return from exile this Neurot Recordings offering is.
A trudging, mesmerizing journey through ruinous, dense soundscapes similar to those mapped out by label mates Neurosis, where a multitude of strange, tortured vocal manipulations are piled atop massive funeral pyres of thick, lugubrious riffs, Brother of the Sonic Cloth is texturally interesting and darkly atmospheric. Here, the icy, haunting post-rock world of Mogwai merges with corrosive, brutally heavy and occasionally crusty guitars in "Unnamed" and an astonishingly epic uprising titled "The Immutable Path" – a bonus track available on the CD version.
Where the punishing opener "Lava" insistently pounds on its wall of sound, like a prisoner who's reached his breaking point and cannot take incarceration one minute longer, what follows with "Empires of Dust" is a malignant, down-tuned force stirring in the bowels of the earth and birthed holding on to a slim rope of slowly evolving melody. Comprised of mediations on loneliness and existence, with the inevitability of mortality always on the horizon, Brother Of The Sonic Cloth is monstrous and fearsome, often going from quiet intros to mountainous power surges, although the fertile, bluesy crawl of "La Mano Poderosa" finds the trio mining more earthy territory with its heavy machinery. Join the Brothers Of The Sonic Cloth on this membership drive before the bandwagon is full up.
– Peter Lindblad
