2nd October 2019

Review: “Gored/New Faces In The Dark” by Loathe

In the first of what looks to be a run of two track singles by different bands appearing via SharpTone Records, genre pioneers Loathe have returned with a couple of fresh tunes to tickle our fancy and keep us talking about them. Make no mistake, the Liverpool natives have paved the way for the likes of Lotus Eater, God Complex and Parting Gift to come to the table and share their offerings to name but a few, so it’s time things came full circle. Many a Loathe fan will no doubt be thinking that a new album is long overdue with 2017’s “The Cold Sun” now 29 months old and the previous split with Holding Absence seemed to be the seriously high quality stop gap. The Deftones influenced “White Hot” is nothing short of masterful. So having heard new song “Gored” at the Employed To Serve “Eternal Forward Motion” release show and been seriously impressed, it was strangely left out of the set at Upsurge Festival.

The dark swirling atmospheric of the introduction of “Gored” is something that Slipknot used to own and would kill for now. Its thunderous grooves and Gloom energy borders on DJent but with the Tech-Metal elements being ripped out and replaced by dark soul energy. Tempo shifts like the sands underneath the belly of a slithering snake and some of Kadeem France’s most brutal vocals confirm that Loathe haven’t gone soft. There’s a control to the sense of chaos and schizophrenia that surrounds the song with guitarist Eric Bickerstaffe entering a scream off with France on a couple of occasions. “New Faces In The Dark” has a classic Deftones styled introduction riff before bursting from the depths like a surfacing submarine and laying down the guantlet with some rythmic pummelling grooves. The mid track Deftones inspired bridge joins the song nicely to the aforementioned “White Hot” while the break out into a thunderous breakdown into schizophrenic tech leads buried by white noise is stunningly good. Please SharpTone Records, can we have some more? [9/10]