Imagine that the Duracell bunny had gone on an all-night bender, snorting lines of cocaine and speed and you might get a sense of how insanely hectic the new Car Bomb record is. Since the band’s inception they have always been recognised for their highly experimental and extremely aggressive approach to metal. But on Mordial, the fourth full-length offering form the Long Islanders, they’ve created a completely new beast all together. The music that the band creates is fluid yet chaotic. As a listener you are pulled left and right until your brain is scrambled and it doesn’t know what the hell just happened. Through the insanity though there is a structure which at its heart is both aggressive and passionate.
What Car Bomb are so good at doing is disguising what they are actually doing. Within the opening moments of the track ‘Fade Out’ the structure seems pretty straight forward, with some rather unique guitar accents, a track that ultimately lures you into a false sense of security with the amount of melody it possesses. However, this sense of calm is instantly gone when the quartet blast into ‘Vauge Skies’ as the trembling guitar riffs are seamlessly transformed into a dirty downtuned breakdown.
Even though there will be a lot to be said about Greg Kubacki’s guitar playing – and rightly so, how he comes up with some of the noises he makes is just as mind melting as the sounds he produces – there is a bold statement also to be made about vocalist Michael Dafferner. Rather than just going for pure aggression throughout, Dafferner uses his voice as a fourth instrument in the way he weaves his vocals through the chaotic minefield.
As the album progresses Car Bomb drift further from centre with their sound, with Kubacki’s guitar actually sounding like a lazer gun on ‘Dissect Yourself’. For all its unusual traits Mordial is a record of two halves. By the time the stumble over the halfway point of ‘HeLa’ it seems Car Bomb really start to let loose with their experimental side and just let what ever feel natural flow out of them.
There are so many moving parts to what Car Bomb are doing that it is sometimes difficult to pin down exactly what is going on, but by the time you reach closing track ‘Naked Fuse’ your brain is so scrambled from the pure excellence of the album, the sounds just wash over you in a kind of heavy acceptance.
Mordial is out 27th September via Holy Roar Records and can be purchased here.
Words: Tim Birkbeck
