Labels: Holy Roar
Review by: Alex Deller
An immense, red-eyed thing rising from the long-buried plague pits of London, Slabdragger live up to their burdensome, humpbacked name and bring to mind some loping, grunting Sleep / Electric Wizard / Eyehategod hybrid that’s powered by little more than thick yellow smoke and an unwavering belief in The Riff. While those bands attain near-spiritual levels of transcendence or negation Slabdragger, however, appear to be playing this merely for riffs and kicks and make no bones about it, their eminently baked flights of lyrical fancy showcasing a stoned sense of humour while the music itself is perhaps a touch too sprightly in places to ever lock down into true trance-dirge. Neither of these things are, of course, cause for much complaint when the heaviness is consistently maintained, the riffs are resolutely crushing and the songs retain enough variation and individuality to keep you consistently interested despite the whopping 51-minute weigh-in. All in all pretty choice, then.