Slewth - Spitting Earth

Slewth

Spitting Earth
self-released; 2015

3.7 out of 5

By J Simpson

All hail the new death n’ roll!

What happens when you mix the mosquito buzzing blast beats of black metal with infectious stoner hooks and proggy death metal riffs, shake until stirred, and play as fast as humanly possible? Splitting Earth, the unholy three-track EP from Lund, Sweden's Slewth.

The only thing truly unholy about Spitting Earth is the fact that it's over in 17 minutes. Slewth cites influential death metal/death n’ roll band Entombed as a formative influence. Despite this, Slewth is inherently more accessible and catchier with more tunefulness and less Cookie Monster/Hatebeak growl in the vocals. It makes Slewth more listenable, easier to return to, which you will want to do, as there are dozens of memorable moments of Spitting Earth.

Other formative influences for Spitting Earth include Metallica and Baroness, which is responsible for the catchy, melodic guitar sounds. This proggish-ness makes Slewth's guitar tones so much more colorful than the traditionally gray scale hum of distorted menace. Instead, melodic solos glisten like a Navajo blanket viewed through a wall of slime, especially on "Our Buddy Behorned" with its glimmering flanged riffs, in tandem.

Two guitars play in total synchronicity, somewhere between an Esther Williams musical and a Panzer engine, firing on all cylinders. Slewth is tight and well rehearsed, while still being primal and prime-evil. They're totally balancing multiple genres, making the best of each and straining the rest through some cheesecloth. This is black metal, without the fascism. This is d-beat, without the politics. This is prog, without the cheese and stoner rock, without the boring.

Slewth is a mighty band that is going in the right direction. Spitting Earth is what "Once More 'Round The Sun" could've been, if Mastodon were still metalheads. You can listen to Spitting Earth three times in one hour with 24-hours in a day. You could technically listen 72 times in one day, and you would probably love metal more than ever.

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