Review: Orme ‘No Serpents, No Saviours’ EP

The self-titled, double album debut from UK sludge/drone/doom trio Orme was pretty well received last year, but when it is two tracks and the SHORTER of the two clocks in at just over forty minutes, you are going to struggle to get that into thirty-minute live festival sets.

Well, enter No Serpents, No Saviours, the band’s new EP that has one twenty-four-minute track, positively grindcore length in comparison! This was the band’s answer to that issue and allowed them to focus on a more riff based performance. No Serpents, No Saviours is out now self-released and marks a new and more urgent direction for the band.

The hypnotic dirges of their debut have been replaced with concrete cracking sludge doom riffs on No Serpents, No Saviours; even leaning towards an almost death/doom sound in parts. It begins with a lumbering swagger, a pair of grinding, ugly guitar and bass tones provide a primal groove back and forth while drummer Luke Thelin tries his hardest to fracture the earth beneath our feet.

There is a brief respite of heaviness around the six-minute ten mark when whispering voices and quiet guitar and drums amp up the creepiness factor before the bulldozer returns. This dichotomy of relentless, sludgy groove and quieter moments provides a balance, breathing room and places for new ideas to take hold.

grinding, ugly guitar and bass tones provide a primal groove back and forth while drummer Luke Thelin tries his hardest to fracture the earth beneath our feet…

The atmosphere is especially ramped up with that Vincent Price sample, a man whose voice is synonymous with fear and the haunting spectre of a slow-motion guitar solo follows an infectious rumbling groove back down into the bowels of the earth.

Orme‘s gloomy trudge into sludgier, heavier climes come as a welcome one; their droning doom beginnings were great but there is only so far that sound can be taken without some evolution, and No Serpents, No Saviours is that step. The roiling, hypnotic vibe is still very much present, but it comes under the auspices of a weightier approach that beefs out Orme‘s sound and puts them up on the level of Conan or Ommadon as underground UK sludge doom titans. I look forward to where they go next.

Label: Independent
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Scribed by: Sandy Williamson