ALBUM REVIEW: Saboteurs of the Sun – Limb

There’s always going to be at least some trepidation when it comes to changing up your sound and messing with the established formula when it comes to writing and recording music. There’s a definite risk of isolating your fan base with a new sound and style, or not being able to make the shift in styles work. Very few bands are able to pull it off with even moderate success. Thankfully, London’s LIMB don’t need to worry about this.

The band, formed all the way back in 2011, are more known for their thick, tar-like guitar and bass tones and sludge/doom metal leanings, a musical approach that has served them well up until this point. However, with their latest, third record, Saboteurs of the Sun, these trappings are mostly done away with, replacing the driven and harsh vibes of Sludge to the sublime and hypnotic sounds of space and psychedelic rock, making their sound more akin to Roky Erickson than WEEDEATER. As even a solitary listen of this record will illustrate, it’s a change of pace that has, without a shadow of a doubt, paid off.

Wych Elm has an incredibly ethereal, almost HAWKWIND-like quality to it, to start with at least, before launching into a solid, down-picked slab of robust riffing. The guitar work is heavy on the rhythms, with some excellent hooks thrown in for good measure. The vocals are equally enthralling, and the songs chorus is sure to stick in your head immediately. As the song progresses, we get some slight, but noticeable, psychedelic flourishes from LIMB which add a whole new slant on the music and provides some variety. It’s a very solid opening track that does a great job of providing a killer track straight away to draw the listener in.

Death In Absentia is more heavily layered with the space rock and psychedelic influences, with
some dense, chunky guitar lines imbuing some impressive heaviness that gives this song a dark, yet intensely powerful, feel from start to finish. It’s got a great blend of vast sounding hard rock musicianship and much more proggy motifs which marks it out early on as one of the album’s better tracks. Survival Kit ramps up the atmospheric side of LIMBS‘ sound even further, with an excellent, hypnotic opening section which quickly descends into a much more epic piece of stellar rock music. The vocals in particular roar over the top of everything, with powerful, emotive guitar parts adding to the track, sliding seamlessly between the dark and the grandiose with ease, doing a brilliant job of mixing a classic rock sound with more substantial metal and space rock sensibilities.

Saboteurs of the Sun‘s fourth track, Rising Tides, is a straight forward, groove-laden hard rock anthem. It’s got a confident swagger to it, with some imaginative musicianship and intense performances on all fronts, which makes this track seem all the more ferocious and fierce. This song’s closing moments lead straight into the track that follows it, Astronaut; this is a song that has all of the space rock and psychedelic influence you would expect from a song with this title. It’s a far more subdued affair than the preceding offerings, with airy distortion, steady drumming and a far softer musical approach, which gives it a strong ambience that hooks you straight away. Other than a few fleeting moments where the music takes on a far more aggressive, monolithic tone, this is a much more sublime composition, and provides a great change of pace that not only sets this song apart from almost all of the others, but breaks the album up very nicely.

The album’s second half is kicked off with Love Has No Name, another full throttle rock song with a distinctly fierce metal edge. It’s got some genuinely catchy guitar hooks and expert drumming, and some more of those excellent, venom soaked vocals, which gives it an incredibly ferocious edge that ties the song together, working so well with the tone set by the guitars and rhythm section. It’s easy to see this track becoming a fan favourite down the line, and with it’s memorable vocals and engrossing music this is almost guaranteed to be the case.

Curse Tablet takes the overall feel in a much heavier direction, with the music straddling the border between hard rock and sludge. There’s a much denser, dirtier tone, and there’s an underlying intensity and aggression to the performances that gives this track plenty of life and energy that practically jumps out of the speakers. It’s got fuzzy, chunky grooves and authoritative drumming, all topped off with some brilliant, acerbic vocal deliveries. It’s easily one of the best tracks on the whole record, with only a couple of songs even coming close to matching it. Man on the Outside takes the listener back down the well trodden route of anthemic rock, with soaring vocals, slick guitars and thunderous drums acting as the focal points for the bulk of this song. It’s got an infectious energy and power that makes it hard not to love.

The album’s penultimate offering, Truth Be Damned, is absolutely monolithic from start to finish, with hazy blues licks shrouded in a palpable and fuzzy tone, marking this out as yet another highlight. The song has an eclectic emotive range, swinging from the forceful and vicious to the subdued and hypnotic seamlessly, providing a ton of variety which helps to keep the track fresh and interesting throughout. The tenth and final song, 100 Years, is extremely atmospheric, with glorious and, dare it be said, angelic vocals being the anchor of the track, with gloomy ambience, sparse, heavily distorted riffs and a smattering of keyboard accompaniments, all driven by a fierce, primal drum beat. It’s a brief track that also stands as perhaps the most experimental on the record. It’s an excellent way to close the album, so hopefully this song in particular foreshadows what we can expect to hear from LIMB in the future; it’s dark yet uplifting music with a solid atmospheric bent.

It’s very clear, when comparing Saboteurs of the Sun to Terminal, that LIMB are slowly but surely shaking off their sludge and doom roots in favour of a much more expansive and engrossing sound. Those sludge and doom elements are still there to be heard, but they are much less prominent than on their previous efforts, opting for something far closer to stoner rock. Luckily, the musical shift from heavier sludgy doom to more monolithic, psychedelia inflected space rock works incredibly well. Although the change, thus far, is much more subtle, it would be great to see LIMB be more adventurous with this side of their sound on future releases, and fully embrace their more ambient, space rock loving side, as it really works well for them. Saboteurs of the Sun is an album that showcases a band that are feeling their way through uncharted territory, and creating some brilliant music as a result.

Rating: 7/10

Saboteurs of the Sun is out now via New Heavy Sounds.

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