Review: “Last City of the East” by Sabot

Hailing from Saint Paul Minnesota are Sabot, a Sludge Metal quintet who are plotting their escape from the shadows by blacking out the sun. Their debut EP “Last City of the East” was engineered and mixed by Jake Watson at Earl Studios before being mastered by Brad Boatright (Obituary, Vamachara) at Audiosiege, marking the first chapter of a horror story that looks like it’s about to run and run…

A Sludge Metal band with flavours of Death,  Doom and Noise Metal interwoven into the fabric of their sound, “Last City Of The East” is something of an amuse bouche, a sixteen minute appetizer that showcases their vision of a filthy rotten sound across a pair of cuts of pure skull rushing intensity. In this savage tale which takes a leaf from the playbook of the production style of Brendan Auld of Black Blood Audio and his bands Snorlax and Resin Tomb, the giant roars “fee fi fo fum i smell the blood of an englishman!” with a blood curdlingly low roar that sounds like nails dragging on a chalk board. Socially “Familial Clot” finds the band painting in tempo with some moments of greater energy lifting from the low and slow central groove that sounds like a Will Haven demo. On the other side of the cassette,  “Pisschrist” has a Black Sabbath style riff at its heart as it ploughs an altogether different furrow while still having the kind of demonic vocals that put the fear into Satan himself. In truth they will divide opinion because the throat has become an instrument as the lyrics are largely indecipherable without a monoclonal and a lyric sheet. A skull obliterating cut, it has a meditative quality to it that reverberates as the techtonic plates rumble beneath your feet [7/10]

1. Familial Clot
2. Pisschrist

“Last City of the East” by Sabot is out now and available over at bandcamp.