BISON - One Thousand Needles
September 3, 2014, 9 years ago
(War On Music Records)
After being dropped by Metal Blade, hirsute B.C. sludge rock behemoths Bison took some time to refocus, and this is the result, the follow-up to their best effort yet, the dense and difficult, and highly rewarding, Lovelessness. But while that album takes a toll on the soul, this EP energizes. Considering it is made up of two tunes, each nearing ten minutes, that’s a tall order. But the band has never sounded so slick: with a new sense of dynamics and a wildly fresh take on songwriting, Bison (just Bison; the B.C. is gone) plows through these two tunes with a heart-racing, adrenaline-pumping approach. The title track might just be the metal tune of the year, and it gets that title by being sludge by way of noise rock (the vocals are pure Unsane) and strange, cutting, angular post-hardcore (in a good way: think Keelhaul) riffing. But the melodies are there, hidden beneath the crashing and bashing, and the production is killer on the drums (and the drumming itself stellar), although you end up wishing the guitars would have just been absolutely drenched in the red; at times they seem positively polite in tone, which actually works in a disorienting way. This is sludge metal going to new places, and 19 minutes of it is, really, the perfect length. And at the end of it all, you just shake your head and think, Your loss, Metal Blade.
