- Genre: 'Heavy Metal'
- Release Date: '24th June 2022'
Our Rating:
As the press release points out, ‘Bridgend in South Wales has produced some musical titans, notably Funeral For A Friend, Bullet For My Valentine, and Those Damn Crows’. It’s a bold claim that I Fight Bears’ are ‘poised to be added to that esteemed list,’, but they’re doing everything right with the release of their new EP, Liberosis, which follows the release of single cut ‘Beacon’ a week before.
The moniker may be something of a chancy boast that no-one’s going to believe any more than when Pulled Apart by Horses claimed to have punched a lion in the throat, but y’know, these guys like to have their stories, and fair play when they’re capable of tearing it up so hard live that you feel like the floor is about to be ripped from beneath your feet at any time.
There’s a brawling, raging fury about the band’s stuttering guitar frenzy and screaming vocals that creates a swirl off chaos and melody, and the two battle it our for supremacy on a knife edge. More often than not, on hearing clean vocals take the lead on a chunky, chuggy metal track, I feel a sense off deflation, because it’s a bit weak and a bit emo and undermines the ferocity, and that goes double when the Big Guitar Solo lands.
On ‘Liberosis’, the clean melodic bits are in there, but they’re chewed up and mangled amidst the tempest of guttural howls and gnarly metal guitars and double-pedal drumming. It helps that some of the guitar solos are a bit more J Mascis than Bryan May. Closer ‘Blieve in Me’ goes for the slower, more atmospheric intro, before slamming in for a screaming, chug-driven finale that drifts out on a rolling piano.
