The Starving Lesson is a record that wishes to instill in the listener a deep sense of unease, tinged with foreboding and just a little existential dread. It is quite successful in this endeavor. Shifting between bass-heavy sludge, with guitars drowning in rising sea levels oceans of reverb (“Pressure to Burrow” and the first half of 13-minute epic “From Tomorrow’s Dead Hiss”), static-laced, partially-heard radio signals (“At Operating Temp”) and psychedelic drone and noise (the other half of 13-minute epic “From Tomorrow’s Dead Hiss” and “The Post Abandoned”), Quiet Man generates a sonic wasteland, filled with impotent fury and ghostly echoes of humanity. Occasional, haunting melodies that surface, briefly revealed as the post-apocalyptic dust is blown aside (title track and part of closer “All Along We were Beautiful Radiant Things”), serve to deepen the melancholic gloom, rather than lift it.
If you’re thinking of Old Man Gloom’s No and maybe ISIS’ Celestial, crossed with Dialetheia, Mizmor’s collaboration with Andrew Black, then you’re in the right sort of space. Opener “Pressure to Burrow” kicks things off with a quirky little repeating guitar melody and insistent bass line, before the drums kick in and, briefly, Quiet Man could be masquerading as Cult of Luna, especially when the post-hardcore howled vocals of guitarist Joe Hughes and bassist Ross Bradley rip in. The best track on the album, it is also unrepresentative of the whole. Its bludgeoning sludge and post-metal tones have an exhausted air to them, which sets the scene for the significant portions of The Starving Lesson that crawl along, majoring in open-spaced drone and samples, including of shortwave transmissions from the “dead hand system” meant to trigger a retaliatory nuclear strike in the event of annihilation (“The Post Abandoned”) and those sent to espionage agents (“At Operating Temp”). The title track sees Quiet Man treading territory somewhere between Eyehategod and Houdini-era Melvins, before The Starving Lesson fades out into an empty, desiccated husk of static and samples on “All Along We were Beautiful Radiant Things”.
Mastered by Cult of Luna’s Magnus Lindberg (as a lot of sludge and sludge-adjacent things I’ve recently reviewed seem to be), The Starving Lesson is bare and stripped back in its heavier passages, all echoing reverb on the guitars and an apparent distance to the vocals emphasizing this, while the ambient drone passages feel richer and more textured (“All Along We were Beautiful Radiant Things”). The combination is effective to a point, with the sludge component emphasizing the almost dreamy quality of the other material. “Pressure to Burrow” is a great song and hooked me into Quiet Man’s sound from my first spin. As for the rest of The Starving Lesson, it has a certain ebb and flow to it but, for me, lacks any other standout moments. The longest cut, “From Tomorrow’s Dead Hiss” lacks the impact a song of its length needs to have, feeling instead meandering and unfocused. Although “Set to Boil is the New Standard” and “The Starving Lesson” itself, each have their moments, the album simply feels long.
I see what Quiet Man was going for with the two aspects to their sound and in places the melding works. The problem with The Starving Lesson is actually the heavier, harsher material, which, with the exception of “Pressure to Burrow,” feels slightly under-developed and its stripped-back nature somehow emphasizes a lack of intensity. Unusually, I found the ambient passages and samples to be evocative and strangely haunting but I wanted the sludge to really slam me back in my chair, rather than just shake me out of my revery.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: ~225 kbps VBR mp3
Label: Riff Merchant Records and Astralands
Websites: quietmanband.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/quietmanband
Releases Worldwide: July 14th, 2023
