Capricorns - River, Bear Your Bones

I listened the hell out of UK instrumental Sludge/Stoner heroes Capricorns last album Ruder Forms Survive; it was the kind of album that never left my car, was always the first pick on my MP3 player - I knew every riff, every timechange, every musical shift off by heart. It's quite comfortably one of my favourite albums of the last couple of years.

So, I couldn't be more excited when their latest opus, River, Bear Your Bones was released last month. The atmosphere is just as dark and overcast but seemingly forgoing the almost constant bludgeoning heaviness of Ruder Forms Survive for a slightly more varied musical vocabulary taking in math-rock and prog - songs shift around as fluidly as the river in the album title. That isn't to say it's not a heavy album, it just feels that the journey is sometimes longer before your body is assaulted with precision drilled riffs.

Their music is just as complex and intricate as similar bands like Isis, Baroness or Pelican, but with none of the pretense that can often creep in, as perfectly summed up by Rock Sound in their review:

There’s an appealing grittiness to Capricorns’ instrumental rumblings. Whereas contemporaries such as Pelican opt to look down on humanity from the heavens, Capricorns seem at home amid the urban sprawl, lurking in dimly lit bars and passed out in piss-soaked back alleys.

Drummer Nathan Perrier, is frequently superlative; loose and proggy when required but providing a consistent framework for the guitars to work around. At times he sounds like he's playing in his own free-jazz band, but it's kept in check by the tight, angular riffs from guitarists Nathan Bennett and Kevin Williams. Get this shit on Rock Band and watch people lose their minds trying to keep up!

Still pushing forward, Capricorns have produced the best metal album these ears have heard so far in 2008. If this is their swansong (as rumours have suggested it may be), I can think of no finer parting document - an album that you can almost guarantee you'll still be listening to years from now, it's avant-metal with all the brains but without losing any of it's balls.

Capricorns - Owing to the Fogs (MP3)

Buy River, Bear Your Bones from Emusic, Rise Above Records or Amazon

More info and tracks at Myspace