SardoniS
Self Titled
7.5
There’s been a decent amount of discussion during the last few months about this SardoniS record, which hit the streets as an indie effort and has since been picked up and released by MeteorCity. Yet after only dipping my toe into some online samples, I almost shortchanged this band as nothing more than instrumental High on Fire worshippers. Not that that would really be a bad thing, mind you, but not necessarily anything that would blow my hair back. But it turns out that this two-piece guitar and drums outfit is far more varied than that, making this record an interesting listen and a satisfying instrumental effort.
SardoniS isn’t afraid to club you over the head with straight ahead ferocity, but as an instrumental outfit they succeed by creating songs with arcs, so there are plenty of shifting tempos and melodies and some rise and fall dynamics only an iteration or so away from the post-metal world. Take the rumbling percussive locomotive menace of High on Fire, some stonerific fat warm desert rock riffs and the purposeful, detailed songcrafting of bands like Pelican, and you have some idea of what’s on the menu here. And that’s a lot of ingredients for them to work through so quickly. These lean compositions, with only a few exceptions, are about two-and-a-half to four minutes apiece. The usual approach is to attack, hook, then retreat. Take "Thor," as its redlined battery slips nicely into a thick, funky hammer-on strut. Elsewhere, the heaving doom of "The Hollow" and the ominous ringing intro to "It Walks the Mountains," (which borrows a bit from "Black Sabbath") satisfy. A horns up to the titles as well, which up the metal quotient with names that also include "Skullcrusher AD," "The Wolf’s Lair" and "More Severe Things Await." MeteorCity wins again.
