RECLVSE - Evil Lurks
December 20, 2016, 7 years ago
(Independent)
Wow, first thing that jumps out here when putting on this EP from South Wales’ Reclvse is the production quality, which is pretty much “in the garage”; kinda charming, actually, as it has an old ’80s or ’90s demo-tape sound to it that you don’t hear much anymore. If you can get past that, the first three songs here are good quality trad doom, the band clearly having a love for Pentagram and Candlemass, although their songs skew more toward the hard rock/proto-doom of the former instead of the trad doom of the latter.
The band dips into more trad doom territory though, with “To Be Slain” plodding along at a good mid-tempo to get to where it needs to go. But, man, when the vocals distort into the red it doesn’t sound killer in a Kurt Ballou-intentional kinda way, it just kinda kills my goddamn ear drums, which have enough problems already. After the trio of new tunes, we get a live song (sure), and a live Pentagram cover (sound quality gets even worse). Good spirit, good playing, but the sonics do end up killing this one before it really has a chance to shine.
