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Review: 'Manatees'
'Helvellyn'   

-  Album: 'Helvellyn' -  Label: 'Shelsmusic'
-  Genre: 'Heavy Metal' -  Release Date: '24th October 2016'

Our Rating:
Certain life experiences remain with you forever, and maintain a rare and vivid intensity. One such experience is the first time I climbed Helvellyn. I was nine, and it was the October half term. My father, a keen fell-walker, decided it would be a good thing for us to do while on holiday in the Lake District, and I had previously conquered Pen-y-Ghent. Climbing from the car park just off the A591, it’s a pretty direct route. On reaching the upper slopes, some way before the ridge that leads to the summit proper, we hit snow. Not enough to need ice axes and crampons, but it was fucking cold: I had to borrow my father’s waterproof gloves. Lunching on sandwiches in the shelter near the summit, and descending though woodlands past Wythburn church, the scenes and the drama of this walk would become etched into my memory, and despite subsequently climbing the same peak at least a dozen times and in some truly ferocious winter conditions, it was this first time which has forged the enduring memory.

Contrary to the blurb’s claim that Helvellyn is the Lake District’s highest peak (it’s actually third after Scafell Pike and Scafell), no doubt some similar experience of the mountain itself is also true for Cumbrian-based transcendental drone metal trio Manatees. With little by way of a scene in Carlisle, during their decade-long existence they released two albums, ‘The Forever Ending Jitterquest Of Slow Hand Chuckle Walker’ (2005) and ‘Icarus the Sunclimber’ (2008) as well as an EP with Eugene Robinson of Oxbow. They also toured the UK and Europe extensively, playing alongside the likes of Baroness, Kylesa, Kayo Dot, Part Chimp, Oxbow, Harvey Milk and Dragged into Sunlight.

The naming of their final recorded work, laid down in 2009 after the mountain is fitting: the six numbered tracks are rugged, heavy, and challenging. The first track builds a slow trudging ascent, and there’s an aching beauty which permeates ‘II’, as the soaring guitar and low-slung bass groove contrast with the gnarled vocals. It’s a heavy slug and no mistake, and the album is as heavy as an actual mountain. It’s a rugged, dense, and challenging work.

By way of a sign-off, ‘Helvellyn’ is a monumental and truly epic set which will, at some point in the future, if not right now, assure the legacy of Manatees.
  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Manatees - Helvellyn