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Raging Speedhorn - Before The Sea Was Built

posted by: maurice on 29 September 2007

Steamhammer

The fourth album of Raging Speedhorn is the first one I listened to. A quick search on the internet tells me they first where known of re-working riffs of early Black Sabbath but later on they shifted more and more to the sound of Breach or Neurosis. ‘Before The Sea Was Built’ is the album that lays the closest to these bands. I hear the similarities but they never go as ‘deep’ and intense as those two bands. Therefore this album is too generic and it lacks the apocalyptic atmosphere.

With the new vocalist Bloody Kev and bassist Dave Thompson they recorded this new album with Larry Hibbitt from Hundred Reasons in Wales. Bloody Kev replaced former vocalist Frank Regan and makes the vocals much more diverse together with the other singer John Loughlin. The vocals are switching between screams and a standard hardcore throat.

They fit the music that could be described as dissonant metal/hardcore combining heavy parts with sometimes (short) atmospheric parts. To keep the attention span tight the songs are mostly between two and three minutes (the album has 10 songs in 28 minutes). On the other hand this is a disadvantage because sometimes the song is over and you expected more.

In “Sound and Waves” they’re driving to a climax and melodies are following upon melodies while the basis of the song still stays heavy. This is an exception in comparison to the rest of the material. Next up “Jump Ship” for example is a short heavy one but they didn’t work it out like the previous one. I get this unfinished feeling from other songs as well. That, and the idea Raging Speedhorn could go much deeper in terms of intensity, is the biggest letdown of ‘Before The Sea Was Built’.

Rating:

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Related bandprofile: Raging Speedhorn