New York-via-Columbus two-piece EARLY MAN makes for an intriguing prospect- signed to the Matador label they seem very much out of place on a roster that includes Belle and Sebastian and Steven Malkmus among others. This is no indie/metal crossover- it is heavy rock at its most uncompromising. It's simple- not thrash-metal, not death-metal and most certainly not nu-metal instead drawing its inspiration from the time when simply turning your amps up to 11 and threatening the neighbors really was enough.
The music is full-on. The muscly guitar riffs go from staccato machine gun fire to brutally fat chords and back again, the drums are deep and punishing and you feel like every song is designed to bludgeon you over the head and then drag you back to it's cave. This is rock and roll at its most primitive and it's as heavy as the 500lb glass acrylic drum-kit they bang it out on. "War Eagle" could be Black Sabbath- and the affected vocals throughout the album are certainly reminiscent of Ozzy himself.
The duo shun production gloss though, and deliberately so. You hear the briefest flickers of guitar solos (most notably on "Evil Is") that tell you this stripped back sound is not a lack of musical capability. Closing track Raped and Pillaged even does a brief foray into different time signatures and concludes with a wah pedal- where guitar effects have been notably absent throughout the album. It is a knowing nod to what could have been made of these songs.
Lyrically it treads classic themes, death, religion and teenage kicks but what lends almost scary authenticity is that from a religiously sheltered background, Conte and Bennati discovered rock at 19 only to be ostracized by friends and family. Early Man is the rebellious result. It is the music that will scare your parents- or rather more accurately it's the kind of music your parents probably played to scare their parents!
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There are certainly some more accessible highlights. Opening track "Four Walls" could easily be a heavier Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and "Thrill of the Kill" even shows hints of a melodic chorus. The problem is that there is only so much that can be done with medium-paced retro-rock- it is ultimately this that is the undoing of the album. There is certainly nothing wrong with heavy, but there is not nearly enough light and shade to add depth and interest across the course of the record- there is virtually no let up in what becomes almost gratuitously heavy songs.
Credit is most certainly due though for a release that bucks the current music trends and their unfashionable approach has yielded some excellent (if not particularly innovative) riffs that deserve to be cranked on the stereo. You can certainly see why Matador signed them.
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