You should know that my brain makes weird associations sometimes. Take, for example, this release. The band is called Snail, the album is called “Feral”. My brain takes “feral snail” and pulls up all the scenes from Spongebob Squarepants that I've ever watched in which Gary the pet snail goes feral and bears his fangs and fun stuff like that. We may not have spoken about my Spongebob fixation before, but know that it exists, and know that I've watched way more of that show than someone my age should have.
Anyway, you wanted to check this out because of the band, not my juvenile television habits. I gotta say, I've never heard this band before but this album just blew me away. This is some very tasty heaviness and I've not heard a lot of music similar to this recently. On their shorter songs, they play a kind of swirly, hypnotic, psychedelic pop, very catchy and tuneful songs with some cool twists. When they crank out the longer tunes, they show their chops, especially on the droney, psychedelic side. They are quite adept at playing a ten minute song that feels as though it went by in a flash, because the music is so entertaining.
To make things just that much more interesting, there is a song like “Born In Captivity” that almost has a garage rock feel, just raving along and then dropping down to half speed before hitting the throttle again. I really enjoy how this band arranges their music. There is not a single misstep on the album, everything seems well thought out and put together.
My favorites on the album are “Building A Haunted House”, the lead track on the album, which could and should be a pop song if enough people really cared about music these days. The song is absolute proof that music can be catchy and engaging when created by actual humans. “Thou Art That” is one of the long tracks on the album and it is a real pleasure to listen to. It manages to be based on a riff yet also manages to have a nice drone feel to it so that you can close your eyes and nod your head and just get lost in the music as you listen. “Derail” is a little mellow at the start, and a little slower feeling than most of the other tracks, but when the band hits it, this might be the heaviest track on the entire album.
This album could be a nice change of pace for you, depending, of course, on what you normally listen to. If, like me, you spend your days lost in death metal and black metal soundscapes, this album will surely be a revelation. I'm willing to bet that even if you listen to music like this all the time, you will still find this one to be head and shoulders above the crowd, and you'll also find it in heavy rotation on your music device of choice. Snail, remember the band and check out this release.
- ODIN