Sole Lord

Album Review

Quite fittingly for a band whose members preface their names with the title of Reverend (e.g. Rev. A. Mack, Rev J. Stieber, etc.), Brooklyn, NY's Hull impart a certain religious fervor into the particular brand of sludgy, progressive, post-metal characterizing their messianic 2009 debut long player, Sole Lord. In all other respects, the album fits most of the genre templates established by Neurosis and Isis that were later bludgeoned to death (and beyond) by (literally) innumerable subsequent outfits — many of them, quite good in their own right, but obviously lacking the distinction awarded only to the few, true innovators in any given field. Hull, for all of their personal talent and evident imagination for working within the form, can't escape this same fate, and after all of the seismic, slothful riffing, frenzied hardcore outbursts, throaty vocal roars, and gentle atmospheric backdrops are wheeled out for all to appraise (see "Transition," "Healer," "Architect," etc.), they are left with just a handful of unquestionably memorable tricks within their arsenal that help to lift this release slightly above the national average. These are: the Spanish guitar intro found on "Innocence," the psych-doom-flavored guitar strums heard on "Immortal" and "Vessel," the swirling feedback maelstrom composing the suitably named "Wrath of the Sands," and the fact that all of the album's ten "tracks" technically compose a single, 45-minute suite (grandly given two titles: "Endless Obsidian Abyss" and "Born from Flesh and Stone"), as they flow into one another nearly uninterrupted from start to finish. Chances are, there will be dozens more special moments, besides, depending on the genre experience of any given listener, which is really the key takeaway here: anyone intimately familiar with all that came before in the post-metal multi-verse will realize there's only so much praise to be heaped on a genre exercise, no matter how good and well executed it is by the members of Hull; but first-time travelers might understandably think Sole Lord is a revelatory, one-of-a-kind, and positively religious musical experience.