November is Doom -Sugar Horse : "Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico"

This Britsh band seems to have two modes of songwriting. The formula for this is a good cop / bad cop scenario. The first song for example opens vocal chant that is mixed back into a big room reverb sound, this is slowly built upon. To their credit, it did leave me in the suspense of wondering how the rest of the album was going to unfold. "Or" the second song is an explosion of screamed vocals and an aggressive pounding. This couples the energy of hardcore with the mammoth weight of sludge. "Consequences" finds them ebbing back down and more of a post-rock mood unfolds thanks to the delicate guitar that drifts out from the ambiance. The sung vocals complement this. The last band that I heard who used vocals that belt out a smooth croon over this kind of rock music was Dredg. These guys are not about grooving like Dredg was. 

Predictably "Comma" goes back to deliberate staccato chugging and angry hard-core yells. A dissonant guitar melody comes in over this to give it more layers than your typical metallic hard-core breakdown. They switch songs in the middle of a phrase ending "Comma" and going into "Neu" which breaks the pattern, as it sticks with heavy in picking up where the previous song left off. It builds into a buzz of noise that drones its way out.  

The last song "Mexico" is more rooted in the menace of sludge. The vocals scream to "inhale-exhale". This drones out with an apocalyptic din that I can appreciate. I like what goes down here, though while the album as a whole has a dynamic ebb and flow, I think many of the songs are too symbiotic with one another and the album often feels like a long song that got chopped up into bite-sized portions . For this reason I am giving it an 8.