Album Review: Wallowing - Earth Reaper
Reviewed by Rick Eaglestone
The first metal band to play a branch of Waterstone’s - Brighton’s Wallowing allow us on their shuttle to hear the soundscapes of latest concept album Earth Reaper which tells the story of a mysterious outcast living amongst a group of unlikely and unearthly beings.
Almost beginning like a film score, the short thirty second “A World Weeping” sets up what is real album start, the savage and aggressive “Flesh and Steel” now I have heard about the band’s intense live shows and all black space suits and ever there was a perfect track that encompasses this aesthetic this would certainly fit the bill.
Now it is quite fitting with alien day soon approaching the again as previously mentioned the feel of a film score, Wallowing serve up a short eerie soundscape into “Echoes of the Outer Reaches” that had such a Jerry Goldsmith stamp to it that I am still waiting for a xenomorph to appear. This is followed by nearly seven minutes of doom-laden tones that are still effortlessly laced despair, the combination of two is just too much of a pull for it not to be my highlight track of the release.
As the album moves on with its narrative the band pull the listener into a black for “Obliteration” again short and providing the perfect navigation into the albums longest track so far as “Cyborg Asphyxiation” makes the rest of the album sound like it should be on the Disney Channel, it’s disgustingly sludgy throughout its ten-and-a-half-minute duration, there a subtle futuristic soundscapes I particularly enjoyed alongside the solos.
The album concludes with title track “Earth Reaper” and now all of the short score like tracks make sense as rolling in a just over twenty-one minutes is lovingly detailed and certainly a good platform to experiment with sounds and styles whilst still narrating the album’s message of growth and discovery, hope born from despair with drawing inspiration from real life issues such as the current political climate, racism & classism.
Overall, not only is this album consistently bleak but the story it tells all weaved in science fiction backdrop is not something I have not previously experienced but now having been introduced to Wallowing and how they construct their art I almost now want this served to me daily such is the nature of Earth Reaper
