STONEBIRDS
SPENCER GRADY
Collapse And Fail
RIPPLE MUSIC
Gallic seafaring sludge crew head into foggy waters
These prog-leaning sludge-conductors sound as though they’ve lodged their harpoons firmly in the bestial back of Mastodon’s mighty Leviathan, but then forgot to pack quite enough cable to reel it in. Visions of the great deep do sporadically threaten to materialise on the album’s more aggressive moments, such as Turn Off The Light and the title track, where despondent yells and beefy, guttural bellows dominate the less impressive grunge-mode sung vocals during passages of taut riffing. But some of the atmospheric breakdowns, rather than ratcheting up the tension, put the mockers on any mounting apocalyptic froth, while Down gets continually waylaid within a swirling vortex of its own reverb-dependent fug. For the most part, Collapse And Fail is that age-old tale of the one that got away.