Sourvein ‘Imperial Bastard’ CDEP 2008

‘Splice the main brace!’ I believe that’s a nautical reference. Maybe that should be ‘splice the membrane’. These hirsute Southern bad boys have been kicking around since the early nineties, and this is their latest offering, a four track ep with an etching of a pirate on the cover. Not a modern Somali oil tanker jacker, but an old school syphilis riddled cutter of throats and swigger of Caribbean rum. I think its Blackbeard. Or one of the guitarists.

These are sludgy and corpulent rock songs that offer nothing new, but are hardly boring either. There’s a strongly historic sea faring feel to this seventeen minute disc. Why? Why not, you dull android. This is a pirate themed concept ep. Maybe the world’s first. Celebrate that fact. We live in a wonderful world. Opening track ‘Vigilante’ busts out the speakers like a fat greaser’s erection, tiny and coated in smeg. Only joking. It’s vaguely doomy and obviously heavy. It alternates between bulldozer slow and thrusting mid tempo. And it drops like a great rusty anchor.

‘Shipwrecked’ bludgeons like the two mighty Blacks; Sabbath and Flag, with a toxic dash of Saint Vitus. Vocalist T-Roy drags his throat over splintered timber and roars hoarsely like a pissed Golem. The chord changes on the chorus are quite grand and imperious, and the drums are hit with the force of a big fat bloke falling off a building and landing on the top of a Ford Transit. The title track churns and grinds, throwing out electric flatulence like the rotting corpse of Hendrix. I lazily liken the sound to early Saint Vitus (first album) with ‘Dixie’ Dave Collins rasping his guts out over the mic, instead of Scott Reagers. The ep closes with ‘Forthwind’, a gigantic doom beast that plods and rocks and groans and reels, and eventually dies in a whistling whine of feedback. T-Roy’s voice is a painful and gruelling noise, and coupled with the grim and dismal murk of the stringed instruments and the particularly violent drumming of Ramzi, Sourvein brew up a right salty sea sludge, thick enough to silt up a small estuary. I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed this small collection of sludge pearls, a nice little offering from a semi-legendary band who are playing these shores very soon.

Label: Candlelight Records
Website: www.myspace.com/sourvein13

Scribed by: Adam Stone