EP REVIEW: Towers Of Silence – A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers
One of the delights of heavy music is the depth of the rabbit hole of variations and experimentation. Metal has been no stranger to progressive and avant-garde bents, dating back to KING CRIMSON, and ranging from the hook-embracing djent prog of ANIMALS AS LEADERS to the more challenging likes of SWANS. Some of these are better entry-level bands than others. Based on this debut EP, Towers Of Silence, A PLAGUE OF LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS are not an entry point for the newbie.
Admittedly, the signs are there even before the first listen. The Dutch four-piece take their name from a VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR song, a band sat at the darker, impenetrable end of classic prog rock. In true avant-garde fashion, it’s hard to pin down a consistent subgenre here. Across the three tracks, there’s plenty of drone metal, a healthy dollop of sludge, and the chaos of free jazz. The band aren’t shy about being loud and abrasive: The Massacre Of Flour opens the EP with wailing, atonal guitar feedback, violent bass bends, and unhinged drums, before a thumping riff with ear-scraping screams from Joost Verhagen. Tonally, there are some similarities here to Belgian outfit POTHAMUS, not least in the Eastern influences and the use of the shruti, an Indian drone instrument.
But this is a far more raw and unpolished effort than that band’s work, not least in the song I Fuck People. Written in support of marginalised global queer communities, it’s a literal tornado of chaos, atonal saxophones and screams blasting across drums that change tempo on a dime. It’s forceful and deliberately unpleasant, and brilliant for it. The EP’s unfiltered, low-key production suits the music well, sidestepping the flattening effect of modern compression with actual dynamics.
To characterise Towers Of Silence as an EP wholly of maximum volume and abrasion does it a disservice. Indeed, the ways the songs carve out space and create interesting sonic landscapes in their dynamic troughs are quietly impressive. The midsection of The Massacre Of Flour does well to create a push-pull of energy between its bookending cacophonies. The title track leans on cleaner vocals and a building drone menace for its first few minutes, building to a crescendo of looping chants and ferocity.
This isn’t an EP to put on at a dinner party, or even for your casual metalhead friends on a road trip. But Towers Of Silence has plenty of merit despite, and indeed because of, its inaccessibility. It’s a visceral EP, full of energy, invention, tension and intent, and a bold first statement from A PLAGUE OF LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS. It’ll be exciting to see what comes next.
Rating: 9/10
Towers Of Silence is out now via Lay Bare Recordings.
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