REVIEW: Emptybrook – Self titled EP                                                                                              by Carina lawrence / Dark Art Conspiracy

Emptybrook are a sludge metal act from Finland who formed in 2015. They are inspired by Finnish low budget movies from the 1970’s and 80’s and the short summers in their home country. They inject an organic and raw sound into their sound and showcase this in their debut self-titled EP…

Opener ‘Repeat’ pulls you in with bouncy groovy tuneful riffs, accompanied by crashing drums, and belligerent vocals that are short and make a high impact. This is a hard hitting and surprisingly melodic introduction to the band…

The brilliant comically titled, ‘The Grand King Of Fuckery’ is heavy as hell, with its stomping sludge sounds offering a complimentary backdrop to the evil harsh vocals – this will surely have you head banging and will be a great extreme live anthem.

‘A Song For The End Of Days’ features drawn out sinister guitars, and sounds like something serious is going down. This is the most beastly song so far with vocalist, Ollijuhani sounding very pissed off and fed up. This has a slower pace, driven by a heavy rhythm that is almost chilled out, in contrast to the full on vocals, and finishes on some nice ambient guitar work, making it memorable.

The winner for funniest titled song goes to ‘Smoking Weed With Numbskull Emptybrook’ poking fun at themselves, and not being too serious lyrically. Initially they look to cause your ears distress with a high pitched alarming sound, before it batters you with its heavy sludge weight. It turns out to be rather upbeat sounding musically for this genre, due to its tone and fast pace, giving it a lighter vibe in this short offering.

Closing song, ‘Hit The Wall Or Hit The Ground’ takes things down a notch, before picking up to deliver a pummelling final blow to end this debut EP.  

This is a solid and rather enjoyable EP, the band should be proud of their inception, especially with them getting the right balance of humour, seriousness and melodies to soften the harshness of the genre, making it must hear for sludge metal fans.

Score: 3.5 / 5

Emptybrook’s Self-titled debut cassette/digital release is released on April 17th 2017.

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