Labels: Hydra Head
Review by: Kunal Nandi
Now if you’ll just allow me to go off on one for a sec, that’d be grand…
Instrumental music is a funny old thing. Some people simply can’t cope with bands without a singer. They actually need someone stage-front telling you how they feel, or what they are thinking about. Bands that let the music do the talking are demanding more from the average audience, asking them to interpret what they’re hearing for themselves. Most times, people will simply not bother. They’re missing out on Godspeed, Tortoise, early Mogwai… basically a shit-ton of ace music. Their loss.
Drone-metal, like Earth or Sunn 0)), has been enjoying a surge in popularity recently (in that it’s gone from extremely unpopular to pretty unpopular, although this may also be due to more widespread recreational drug use). It can achieve the same calming effect as normal ambient music through more obvious physical methods, by bombarding the eardrum with wave upon wave of thrumming, massaging sound. The sheer ear-splitting volume levels some of these bands implement means that there is always the pure adrenaline rush from having your head physically moved about by sound.
Whereas a band like Earth (my personal favourite) have a more abstract method of attack, Pelican are a more conventional proposition, seeing as how they rely mainly on the use of melody, and the good old tried-and-tested quiet bit followed by crushingly loud bit. But the main thing is the melody, as Pelican have huge, lush, simple power-chords, sliding into each other like tectonic plates at destructive plate margins. It’s hummable, yet deafening, and it’s very enjoyable.
Forthcoming splits with both Floor and Growing help to give an indicator as to where Pelican are coming from, as they sit nicely between the two stools occupied by those very different bands. Slow, heavy and loud, sure, but also dabbling in experimentalism. There’s immense promise here.