Stavation begins by feeding the listener a furious little flurry of fiendish force on the drums. From there the feast of a riff roast is laid heavily down onto the centre of the table. As the listener tucks in ravenously the aroma of the main course wafts in and it’s a sludgey beast with a generous side helping of doom.
The track as a whole has this spooky choral feeling at its heart. The turn on the organ only serves to add to this effect. It’s dark, it’s moody, and it’s deliciously well paced. As one instrument ebbs away another swells to take it’s place. The soundscape is an evolving and swirling swamp that bubbles with a prehistoric rage.
Longheads stomp along leaving gargantuan footsteps in their wake until around the 3:00 minute mark when they uncage a feral howl. Starvation bursts forth from the cocoon that caged it before and unleashes pure unholy hell on everything in earshot. It’s magnificent, it’s maleficent, it’s mountainous in stature and it’s more riff than mere mortals can handle.
This psychedelic little journey through the pits of doom is constantly shifting and subverting expectation. It is familiar to those that know the genres but isn’t content to rest there hitting the same notes, instead the songbird flys the coop, pecks out the eyes of the nearest human, and gets inside the now emptied skull to play marionette with a creepy dance all of its own.
Starvation is just a taste of what the Longheads can do and the EP promises to serve up even more, grab your forks and knives and dig in, it’s one hell of a feast.
Head over to their Soundcloud and check out the full-length EP ‘Higher Than Bacteria‘.
Words by Matt Miles
