Hollow Leg Takes Doom Metal To Another Level
An absolutely thrashing EP release from Hollow Leg hits with a bit of fierce tonality, with super grungy, gritty guitar tone leading it straight into the depths of Doom and Stoner metal, but with this vast undertone that makes everything spacious and super lush, full-bodied, and hard-hitting.
The record is called Echoes, and it definitely wastes very little time with its first track, "Last Tribe", which fades right into a massive riff, giving you an idea of the sort of desert metal aesthetic that you were getting yourself into.
The drummer is absolutely perfection, and my personal opinion. He's not super over the top and doesn't just sit in the pocket either. Instead, he brings this ferocious kind of liveliness to the track, and you can sense the rest of the band pushing off of that.
He works that ride cymbal perfectly and really drives the guitar riff to the highest point.
When it hits the chorus areas, he starts smashing on those crash cymbals, giving things a bigger and even more explosive feel, and the whole thing is just gigantic.
The bass guitar also delivers a massive sonic backbone that doesn't just give you low end but also gives you a certain thickness that gives the song an added punch. It feels bigger because that bass guitar is really punching a hole through things.
The vocals are the character of the track. It's a combination of singing and screaming that really feels classic to me. It's got the air of an early 2000s or even late 90s underground super heavy rock vibe, and it's completely nailed.
One of the things that really grabs me about this record, honestly, is the energy levels. It feels almost as if they recorded these tracks, even in part, live, on the floor, in one room.
Even if I'm wrong about how they recorded it, because let's face it, I certainly wasn't there, listening to the record makes you want to go see them perform it live, in your face. This is mainly because if they can capture that kind of energy and aesthetic on record so well, then seeing them alive must be a face melter, which is exactly what I would expect from a band like this in that setting.
The song boasts some sick changes and gets even more spacious and sort of engulfing as it plays through, with awesome guitar work that changes up along the way. The time signatures switch up, and the whole thing just becomes a bit more epic.
This is a pretty fat song, too, running over 5 minutes in length, and it's perfect for fans of Doom Rock and Metal that have a bit of a fantastical underbelly to it.
"Bury Our Kings" is a crusher of a song as well, also delivering some intensity in terms of the vocals and the guitar riffs. The whole thing is an atmosphere that's kind of all its own, and once you step into it, you just don't want to leave.
This song showcases some cool augmented chords along with a lot of metal influence.
"Red Skies" is kind of a fun one because it's got a bit of a bop to it but doesn't stray far from that desert, Doom metal approach, along with vocals that I think are probably the hardest hitting on the record here. I feel like the vocal performance on this track in particular pushes it and elevates the song a little bit because it really hits with a bit of a rumble.
When I say the record thrashes, it's not in the sense that you may think. These songs aren't speed metal. They're drawn out and expansive. The riffs are wide, thick. This is what I mean when I say it has classic Doom and Stoner approaches, but it's blended with a sort of desert rock aspect as well, coated in heavy-handed alternative, and cooked at 400° for about a half an hour so that in the end, you have this full experience that's just engulfing, and the best way is possible.
What I mean when I say that, of course, is that these guys have a recipe for their sound. It's a formula, and it works awesome because although it's not reinventing the wheel, they're claiming it for themselves. They're putting their own spin on heavy genres that are melted into each other, and it's all because they have a love for their craft.
When I say that, I don't just mean playing their instruments or singing, I mean writing songs together so they can create massive sonic opuses of heaviness.
This is definitely a record that you listen to in full all in one shot.
Make sure you get to that final track, "Ride The Wave/Dig The Grave", because that's kind of the most intense and hard-hitting of the batch.
I'm not going to dig too far into that one right now because you have to listen to it.
However, I will say that it feels like a lot of the rest of the record, as huge as it is, sort of leads up to this explosive ending.
It's a daring way to close out an EP, that's for sure.
So, this is for anyone who loves Stoner, Doom, sludge, desert, metal, all that stuff.
It's literally all covered throughout this one record.
Don't miss it and don't forget where you heard it first.
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