Singles + EPs

Single Review: The Crucible

[Single: Beyond Driven]
[Label: Sub-Mariner Records]

East London’s The Crucible have been collecting praise for their last EP, aswell as winning the Best 3-Piece category at the Glasswerk New Music Awards. They have a minor record contract and for this single they appear to have a team of technicians behind them to get it sounding it’s best. All this makes me rather confused when considering the quality of production.

It’s all sounding rather heavy and dull. Those suffering the most are the bass drum which is rather hollow, the snare which is muffled, and the bass guitar which sounds wetter than a John Prescott fart. Combine the sound quality with the fact that the opening bars lead me to believe I’ve loaded Survivor’s ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ and it‘s not a good start. Yet, the band have something good going on here with the crunchy open-chord guitars offsetting the pitch-perfect hushed vocals of Dan Isaac nicely. The song itself has a solid structure, trapping an almost animal-sounding menace within. There’s a few jangled samples thrown in for good measure towards the track’s end to really drive the point home, but the fizzing guitar achieves that far better by blasting to a zig-zagging close.

The “B-side” is ‘To The Lions’ and is all minor chord disquiet lilting into a tightly-curled fist of punching sludge guitars and drums and back again. Leaving the vocals to one side the band concentrate on cutting and pasting different sections together to create a intricate post-rock pastiche. This is the track of the two that shows the band’s apparent comfort in diversity and clear potential for the future. Boys, get thee to a good producer and fast!

For fans of: Black Mountain, Comets On Fire, Mudhoney
Band link = The Crucible

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