Words like “accessibility” are, for the vast majority of the music industry, used as a compliment, but in the seedy underbelly of heavy music’s most abrasive fringes, any artist would be loathe to hear such a description of their sound. With Whelmed, two of the UK’s best purveyors of bludgeoning intensity and challenging absurdity combine to throw the very notion of accessibility down the drain.
Liverpool’s Bodies On Everest and Newcastle’s Lump Hammer toured together back in 2018, and over a year on they’re coming together to release a lengthy split full of harrowing noise rock and impenetrable noise. The former act contribute four expansive tracks to the aptly-titled Whelmed – which boasts a runtime of over an hour and forty minutes – with their twin-bass setup aiding in the creation of tense soundscapes that soon build into sweltering infernos of sludgy riffs, ominous drones, curious electronic flourishes and infernal vocals that could be tortured cries emanating from hell itself.
Lump Hammer’s side, meanwhile, is no less fierce. Consisting of a distinctly distorted strain of mutated noise rock, their music is more direct than Bodies On Everest’s, something reflected by the comparatively shorter runtime of their offerings. But what they lack in the way of prolonged build-ups they more than make up for in the cacophonous ramblings they contribute here, and closer ‘FFS’ is a sludgy sixteen-and-a-half-minute epic sure to test your resolve in the most thrilling way possible.
Today, Astral Noize is beyond thrilled to bring you a sneak preview of the split ahead of its release on 18th October. Below, you can check out both Bodies On Everest’s ‘Kicking My Landlord’s Head In’ (what a fucking track title) and Lump Hammer’s ‘Manual Labour’. Enjoy!
Whelmed is out 18th October via Panurus Productions and Inverted Grim-Mill Recordings. Pick it up on tape here or on CD here.
Words: George Parr
