I remember when Black Sheep Wall ”qualified” for an Encyclopedia Metallum profile with sophomore effort No Matter Where It Ends. Kind of pedantic and nitpicky, but then again, their blend of sludge metal, post-metal, doom, and post-hardcore is bound to be divisive. The California quintet offers their fourth full-length Songs for the Enamel Queen, an expertly written and superbly executed mass of concrete-thick sludge metal injected with tumorous melodies and shifty rhythms. While former releases I Am Going to Kill Myself and No Matter Where It Ends were sludge-heavy post-y Neur-Isis worship and I Am God Songs recalled Admiral Angry or Kowloon Walled City in its noisy bass-heavy sludge hardcore beatdowns, Songs for the Enamel Queen utilizes a unique approach and sets out on a twisty path of its own.
Black Sheep Wall’s new direction, for as many paths as it takes into the foothills of strangeness, is firmly summited upon the mount of vitriol and grit. Lyrics depict somewhat generic concepts in failed relationships, sexual failure, mental health, and substance abuse, but the means revolve around violently abstract musings punctuated by memorable and explicit explosions—which is an accurate representation of the music. While songs like “Ballad of a Flawed Animal” and “Mr. Gone” revolve around the sprawling and menacing sludge riffs you can expect, tracks like “Human Shaped Hole” and “Concrete God” have more in common with The Fall of Troy rather than Eyehategod. Layers of melodies accented by mathy riffs and post-metal repetition greet the ears with a sense of post-rock dynamics, the sludge a mere reminder in the density of the riffs.
But where the true memorability lies is in Songs for the Enamel Queen’s massive epics. While the shorter tracks are solid in their own right, they feel like interludes for the true patience exhibited in the longer treks. They feel much more fleshed out, allowing for the ominous spoken word and patient and melancholic plucking to dominate “New Measures of Failure,” the crashing mathy sludge of “Ren” to morph into the jazzy trumpet atop surreal plucking, the dynamics building to the dense staccato riffs of the noise-saturated “Mr. Gone” that somehow get heavier and heavier with each iteration or the Isis’ Panopticon-esque shoegazey meandering and dissonant mathy spazzes of “Prayer Sheet for Wound and Nail.” While the shorter tracks offer lively and energetic performances (Jackson Thompson’s drumming is particularly impressive), the album’s four 10-plus-minute epics better show an expert hold on songwriting.
Songs for the Enamel Queen is Black Sheep Wall’s first release in four years. With life responsibilities and consistent issues with the lineup, it revealed itself in the tumultuous I Am Going to Kill Myself—a crisis of where to go from here. Their newest steps up in every way imaginable thanks to its absurdly solid songwriting, transcending its list of influences into a unique album that’s as crushing as it is abstract. Its lyrics are uncomfortable and the spoken word passages can be a tad off-putting, but the organic quality of Songs for the Enamel Queen allows for this fluidity. It crushes, it burns, it soothes, and bends and warps its influences for an album with just as many highlights as the all-pervasive atmosphere of betrayal and misanthropy. As its title perhaps suggests, this one has bite.
Tracks to Check Out: “Human Shaped Hole,” “Ren,” “Mr. Gone”
