ALBUM REVIEW: Echoes From A Mass – Greenleaf

If you’re ever looking for some solid stoner rock sounds, GREENLEAF can do you no wrong. Returning with their new album Echoes From A Mass, following up from 2018’s Hear The Rivers there’s inevitably some excitement about what’s on offer. With ten more tunes lined up, will they deliver the bombastic stoner rock we’ve come to expect?

A strong start with first track Tides blossoms into a nice, heavy sludge fest of dense guitar chugging and growing basslines, with nicely opposed vocals, clean and crisp with a signing chorus of voices creating a mythical quality. It’s aggressive and mysterious in equal measure, and leaves you eager to consume more. Just as well then, that Good God I Better Run Away delivers a roaring four and a half minutes of stomping, rhythmically charged grooving. While it’s not ground breaking, it ticks all the right boxes for bluesy, good time moshing music; high energy, decent vocal melody, good riffs. It’s a good time.

For something with a little more tension and restraint, Needle In My Eye is a go to. Mostly, it holds itself back, giving hits of something darker and more urgent lurking just beneath the surface. GREENLEAF are more focused on lyrical storytelling here, which has a grit and charge that really benefits the whole movement. As things build, it becomes a tumult of bittersweet licks and bluster-blurred drum fills to great effect.

While Love Undone leans into the southern rock sounds, it plays things a little safer. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, and it’s a well-produced piece of work. However, that doesn’t kick as hard or swoon as softly, and just when you think things are going to kick off, you end up with three unnecessary build ups one after another, only to be greeted by a like for like repeat of the chorus.

Not to fear though, Bury Me My Son has much more swagger from the off, something in the lull of its rhythm that feels psychedelic. You can feel the heat and swing of the music urging you to sway and move yourself. Thankfully, when promised a build up to something bigger, it takes its time with one mean bass line, that signals the galloping charge into some sweet guitar riffing and delivers on it’s heavy, intoxicating groove.

A Hand Of Might is very playful, something like a mischievous fairy tale, with tumbling riffs and drums, creeping hooks and bellowing vocals, while Match On Higher Grounds has a more swooning, psychedelic edge once more. Everything’s very well placed in this album, there’s plenty of bang and sparkle, lots of meat on the bones of every song, while a GREENLEAF allow each tune it’s moment in the sun.

Another one that allows the lingering loop of the riff to catch your ear, Hang On is big, blue driven smouldering to a tee. It rises and rises, adding layer and after layer, until the satisfying screaming solo blows out, and the blistering outro pummels right up to it’s tight, pleasantly abrupt ending.

Our longest offering so far, On Wings of Gold manages to take everything that GREENLEAF fits into a shorter format, and pump it full of the same aggression and drive without ever feeling tired. It’s poignant, dynamic and mature, a real triumph of expression.

Leaving off What Have We Become has a decent run up at stripped back, looped riffs with less effects on the vocals. It’s a nice tune that builds it’s heavy, stomping weight, that has a feel of something that would fit perfectly over some slow-motion set piece in a movie. It’s the most chilled tune on this record, filled with a melancholy kind of emotion that sits against the rest of the record as a stand out in atmosphere rather than huge dirty riffs.

Echoes From a Mass is a meaty, substantial album with plenty of psychedelic, blues infused stoner atmosphere. With plenty to delve into both melodically and lyrically, GREENLEAF have proven again that they’re well versed in how to make solid, hearty tunes that more often than not keep up momentum, energy and grit.

Rating: 8/10

Echoes From a Mass is set for release on March 26th via Napalm Records.

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