Manatees
Carlisle based prog-sludgers make a welcome return to Edinburgh. Mixes up soaring, clean melodic parts with filthy sludge, all underpinned by thunderous percussion. The whole post-metal genre is getting a bit stale, but Manatees take it way beyond what the majority of Isis clones are capable of in terms of atomsphere and power.
"This cacophony is something you feel even with the volume down; close the curtains and dim the lights and let it lift you clean out of your seat and up into an otherworldly state of mind that so few cosmic travellers have ever traversed. King Crimson, Sunn O))), Comets On Fire: there are elements of these acts here, but they’re distorted, radiation from some collapsing star speckling them with an alien fire that burns harder and faster than this band’s slow-motion approach to ear-shredding alludes to initially. There’s a rawness that comes on like a rash; it itches, infecting the skin and later the senses until the body is powerless to do anything but nod itself in time to the thundering drum beats and snarled vocals."
-sludgeswamp
www.myspace.com/manateetheband
Year Of The Man
Isis/Cult Of Luna-esque post-metallers from Leeds, on tour with Manatees.
www.myspace.com/yearoftheman
Wraiths
Edinburgh's unholiest duo bring the pre-industrial plaguescapes.
"Haunting the dank crypts below Edinburgh's cobbled streets, Wraiths seek to reify the shambling masses abandoned by God during the plague-years of this fog-bound city. These two tortured priests take the hymns of their past lives and pervert them into vast walls of howling sound; a blood-flecked gobbet of phlegm in the eye of their one-time Lord. Playing instruments as broken and wretched as their own decaying bodies, Wraiths conjure their blasphemous noise with no assistance from the modern world's difference engines and thinking machines. Wraiths are the horror of infection."
Ever wondered what it'd sound like if the Great Old Ones escaped their capivity between the stars and reclaimed the Earth?
www.myspace.com/wraiths
That's What The Old Man Said And He Never Came Back
Debut CDH appearance for this new Edinburgh two piece. Minimal, atmospherical instrumentals much like Earth's more recent output.
www.myspace.com/germanshepherdofthedeep
Monday 21st July
Henry's Cellar Bar
Morrison St
Edinburgh
7.30pm, £6