August 13, 2013

Pine Barrens - Kingmaker


Artwork by Steve Larder

Pine Barrens - Kingmaker. You know about punkish black metal right? This is more the other way around: black metal infused punk. Add crust, hardcore, grind, even a little doom, and you end up with a band not entirely unlike the genre-benders you find on the Southern Lord roster. Pine Barrens certainly knows the power of the riff too, check out "Nerves" from 2:05 onwards - and appreciate this solid advice:
And out there somewhere someone is keeping tabs,
so look at yourself and clean yourself up.
Most of the the songs are intense and catchy bursts of energy. The playing is extremely effective; so effective that you may not notice that it is also detailed and technically proficient. Pine Barrens are not afraid to inject a little complexity here and there, without going all mathy on us.

What will make your ears stand up are the last two songs "Binary" and "Solitude (My Love)". "Solitude" is a kind of progressive doom punk epic, which doesn't make any sense on paper, but absolutely does when you hear it. "Binary" has one of the nicest (and most surprising) song restarts I have ever heard. I won't spoil it for you, just urge you to click the player below, and check out Kingmaker for yourself.


[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

2 comments:
  1. I'd buy this album just for "Binary" alone. I desperately want to spoil it, but I'll behave myself.

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    1. Ha ha, yeah. It is one of those songs you just have to hear. It works so well.

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