ALBUM REVIEW: Earth Reaper – Wallowing
Since their formation back in 2018, Brighton’s WALLOWING have quickly become one of the most promising new acts within the UK’s underground scene. Establishing themselves as a force to be reckoned with live, and with records that expertly blend black metal, sludge, hardcore and doom metal, the band’s varied and noxious musical approach has garnered them no small amount of cult status and critical acclaim. Almost four years since the release of their debut album, Planet Loss, the band are back with its equally impressive follow-up, Earth Reaper, an album that builds spectacularly upon the foundation of their debut, resulting in not only their best work to date, but arguably their most ambitious as well.
After the short and electronic A World Weeping comes and goes, the first full track on the record, Flesh And Steel, bursts into life, combining feral vocals and monolithic rhythms, interspersed with jarring leads, which only add further to the dense and claustrophobic atmosphere of this piece of music. It may only be a relatively short offering, but it possesses a heft and ferocity that makes it feel much more bombastic and domineering, setting the tone for the rest of the album extremely well.
The dense and droning Echoes of the Outer Reaches, another fleeting instrumental, serves as a great segue between this track and the following one, Cries Of Estima, a huge, haunting piece of music that marries the crushing Blackened Hardcore of Flesh And Steel with heady, bleak sludge elements that not only add plenty of weight to the mix, but also provide a chunkier, melody-tinged sound to proceedings that makes this all the more impressive and captivating. Towards the song’s closing moments, the music suddenly descends into a far more chaotic and belligerent style built around frenetic, almost grindcore-like intensity, visceral vocals and shroud-like, ethereal samples that fill out the already substantial sound, pushing this records sound to its most bellicose and discordant.
The third and final instrumental interlude on this album from WALLOWING, Obliteration, adds a noisy, static quality into the mix, and leads seamlessly into Cyborg Asphyxiation, much longer number that is built upon hypnotic, but cavernous sludge with an arid, acidic snarl of a vocal carving through the thick, rumbling music with ease, counterpointing the muscular undercurrent of the music with a biting edge. Haunting touches of futuristic synth and hazy lead guitars gradually begin to make their presence felt, before the music lurches abruptly towards a more driven, punchier take on what has dominated this track from the start, with solid grooves and acerbic performances on all fronts making this a more energised and immersive conclusion.
Earth Reaper, the fourth and final full track to feature on this album, is an utterly sprawling and ambitious effort that takes up almost the entirety of the second half of the album, utilising lighter tones to build a palpable ambience early on, before reverting to the meaty, punishing brand of blackened sludge that has loomed large in the albums sound, albeit with a few more cacophonous passages adding a rabid, caustic flourishes and warm, bluesy hooks injecting an animated and catchy side to even the most savage moments here. All of the core components of the band’s sound, from black metal to sludge to hardcore, is incorporated here, resulting in a wide-ranging and eclectic sound that brings the record to a head in a powerful and adventurous fashion.
One thing that’s incredibly clear, when comparing this album side by side with Planet Loss, is just how much more effectively the various elements within the bands sound are blended together. Although the bands sound was always extremely eclectic to begin with, the shift from one style to the next is much more seamless than on their debut, making each of these track feel far more diverse and immersive, resulting in what is easily the bands most consistently fierce and focused effort to date. Earth Reaper showcases a band at their creative peak, and could very well see WALLOWING reach a much wider audience outside of underground circles, and establish themselves on an international, rather than just a national, level, as a vibrant outfit, both creatively and live.
Rating: 9/10
Earth Reaper is out now via Church Road Records.
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