Some bands should just not do lyric videos. There are proponents and opponents of the phenomenon, which has been used primarily as a way to make cheap videos for some social media buzz. I personally don’t mind them too much; they make for nice karaoke material and you can always skip the ones you don’t like. But they certainly have the potential to backfire. If your lyrics are hilariously bad, but ordinarily unintelligible, you are really just advertising your baffling poetry for the world to see. The opening track from Sea Sleeper’s debut Nostophobia (meaning ‘fear of returning home’) is a prime example of such a video, revealing such beauteous prose as “You will need permission to drown in these water” and “Speak to this ocean / it can compromise.” The video quickly made the rounds through the AMG staff, and legend has it, some of its extended family still burst into fits of giggles when hearing the words “soggy ligaments.”
But enough about the lyrics. They’re largely unimportant anyway, as the vocals are impossible to understand. The nasal, Mastodon-like cleans, oftentimes soggy with vocoder effects, reveal an occasional word or two, but most of it gets lost like foam on a cresting wave. The more prominent harsh vocals hold the middle between screeching and barking and are only distantly related to words. The riffing style is the direct result of running a simulation for simplified old Gojira mixed with simplified old Mastodon with the knob marked for “slamminess” turned to full. This label relates more to the style than the texture, by the way; the guitar sound is every bit the soggy metallic chunkiness of Gojira, but the melodies seem tailored to pound you into submission rather than hypnotize as the better works of the French giants tend to do.
In fact, nearly everything about the album seems to be focused on bludgeoning without much regard for anything else, such as hooks, memorability or flow. No point in any song seems to have much in common with the next, nor do most of the riffs have a logical sense of progression. Chords are loudly played in some sequence while the drums attempt to slam right through the skins with sudden bursts of blastbeats, the vocals scream incomprehensibly in your face and the bass attempts to fill any remaining nooks and crannies with thick, thrumming thumps. Sometimes a riff makes just enough sense for just long enough so you can get your bearings straight (“George Van Tassel”), or a quieter interlude is inserted in the name of dynamic songwriting (“Far More Than Sustenance Now”) and then the song moves on and you are drowning once more.
And, you know, it must be said, there’s something about it that works given the oceanborn context. It’s easy to imagine being thrown overboard at night and clinging desperately to life as black waves slam you left to right. The ocean doesn’t care about such quibbles as structure and progression, right? Well, maybe, but the ocean isn’t reviewing this album either, and while a little chaos is good for the soul, Sea Sleeper is about as balanced as a drunk rhinoceros on a tightrope. With little more than the occasional twig to cling to, I get so lost in the maelstrom that you could drop me at any random point on the album and I would not be able to tell you what song it is.
Sea Sleeper certainly isn’t a band that cannot be saved. I dig the vibe it’s going for. The harsh vocals are unintelligible but they have considerable power behind them. The riffs contain interesting snippets sometimes, that I would love to have seen explored further. But for it to work, everything needs to be tightened up a notch or two (or five). A bit more contrast against the chaos, a little relief so you can wreck my shit all the harder, riffs that stick for longer than the time it takes to play them, an ounce of returning leitmotifs that gives individual tracks individual identities. These things go a long way, but when you’re asleep in the sea, your ligaments are soggy and you’re afraid to go home, they are a long way away.
Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 128 kbps mp3
Label: Metal Assault
Websites: seasleeper.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/seasleeper
Releases Worldwide: February 5th, 2021
