The slow burn is where it’s at with the hypnotic builds on ‘The Great German’ is a colossus of an opener, a full seven and a half minutes of spiralling psyched-out guitar-driven bliss that works its way to a white-hot crescendo.
It’s mixed so the riffs all but bury the vocals, and that’s cool – not because the vocals are bad, but because it accentuates the full-force guitar grind, the punishing, pulverising power chords that define Early Mammal’s sound. The strolling bass and crashing, heavy, steady-as-you-like drums are nice – nay, essential – but ultimately, the guitars dominate.
The mid-section of the album offers a change of pace and tempo, with ‘Morning’ leaning into psychedelic folk territory with a cleaner guitar sound swirling around a repetitive chord structure and the introspective, skeletal ‘Sigh On’ proving to be unexpectedly haunting, delicate and moving.
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‘Glad is Night’ returns to weightier realms, an eight-minute psychedelic stoner shoegaze work-out that weaves over trudging motoric drums, drawing on elements of Earth and Black Angels in the process. The warped desert country of ‘Sak Bacle’ wafts like a mirage before ‘The Good / GG Return & Out’ brings the album full cycle in a crunching blizzard of heavy duty power chords.
As a body of songs, ‘Take A Lover’ is all about the big, churning throb, the dense wall of sound, the relentless riff. And it succeeds – and then some.
Early Mammal Online
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