Dragger : "Taken Form"

If you took a hardcore band and gave them a sludge band's production, then this is what it would sound like. The guitar tone is blown-out, dense sludge of fuzzed-out meaness. They are plenty angry and have a bit of thrash in their aggressive attack. On the first song, the one lead guitar is the only element that feels out of place, and that is because it sits too forward and too cleanly in the mix; it is an overdub that was not managed into the present wall of sound, or the guitar tone itself needed to be tweaked to blend it."In the Mire " is the band working of a more deliberate chug and none of the over dubbed guitar is there to distract me from it. It also feels like an extension of the previous, so there is not a great deal of overall dynamic range to what they do so far. 

"Potent Sea" finds them building more memory as the barked vocals fall into the background. The husky vocal delivery on this one sounds more like something a sludge band would do, as it has that lumberjack feel. Though all of this lies in the pacing and the phrashing as it becomes more punk on "Martyr Tombs". Though even in this song they allow themselves to evolve and blend genres.  There are moments where this also reminds me of early Mastodon, with plenty of powerful chugs to back up this theory. The drumming is not as frantic as Brann's. They fall back into the more uptempo take on sludge with " Cautionary Tale". The guitars are doing most of the heavy lifting to compensate for the vocals. 

There is more form and function to "Everything is Rot". The vocals are just another layer here as the guitars tell the tale. Everything does fall into place in a very compact manner that gets the point across. I will give this album an 8.5; they are certainly heavy enough to please most. If you are looking for a more punk-minded sludge band, then this should do it for you.

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