ALBUM REVIEW: The Grand Scheme Of Things – Sugar Horse
As the Summer ends and the nights grow cold and dark once more, who better than UK post-metal quartet SUGAR HORSE to hold your hand on a walk through the sodden autumn leaves? Their new album might just be the perfect soundtrack for it. Formed in 2015, the Bristol band first really garnered attention with the release of 2019’s DRUJ EP and cemented this with their excellent full-length debut The Live Long After. Billed as a more direct and to-the-point album, its follow-up The Grand Scheme of Things certainly starts off sounding less crushing than you might expect if you’re familiar with their work. The opening trio of songs here build from humble beginnings to reach a powerful almost euphoric crescendo led by the thunderous wall of sound the band creates and the mournful, desperate vocals of Ashley Tubbs.
There is still a heaviness to these opening tracks, a weight that is almost palpable, but it doesn’t come from pummeling riffs or driving rhythms. It’s more the structure of the songs, the changes from melancholic, echoing guitars to speaker-fizzing distorted keyboards, from whispered lyrics that are almost inaudible to the pounding reverb-heavy toms that strike you out of nowhere.
The beauty and scope of these songs (The Grand Scheme Of Things, The Shape of ASMR To Come and Corpsing) is almost overwhelming at first and it’s no surprise to learn that much of this album was written as Tubbs came to terms with the passing of his father. The grief he must have been feeling is so painfully captured in both the songs and his vocal performance that it almost makes the music uncomfortable to listen to, as if you are imposing on someone’s very private moment of mourning. The balance the band strikes here between joy and sadness, the desire to celebrate a life and the utter despair that it is over, is genuinely striking and incredibly powerful.
However, the band is not completely done with the heavy guitars just yet, as fourth track Mulletproof shows. Building from a distorted soundscape of guitars and vocals it absolutely explodes into a doom-fuelled monster at the two-minute mark, a colossal down-tuned riff accompanying Tubbs’ inhuman screams as the song grinds to a shuddering halt. That the band can move from the loss-filled serenity of the opening numbers to something as heavy as Mulletproof, Spit Beach and demented album closer Space Tourist (all twenty minutes of it) without losing the overall feel or momentum of the record is an achievement in itself. When the songs are of the sheer depth and quality of the nine offerings here, then you’re dealing with something very special indeed.
The atmosphere that drips from each song is complemented by the aural experience with the majority of the songs being recorded live in a derelict church. This means the ‘big room’ reverb on the drums and guitars is exactly that – the organic sound of music being played in echoing, crumbling ruin. This, of course, works brilliantly given the overall theme of death and mourning that the album so frequently – and expertly – explores. This is an album that feels so well crafted and is an incredibly satisfying, if challenging, listen. Part MOGWAI post-rock, part CONJURER-esque doom, it is somehow both beautiful and horrifying at the same time and will no doubt satisfy any fan of emotive, deep and heavy music. A completely unique future classic.
Rating: 10/10
The Grand Scheme Of Things is out now via Pelagic Records.
Like SUGAR HORSE on Facebook.