Album review: Empire State Bastard – Rivers Of Heresy

By DAN SOUTHALL

SUPER groups are a funny thing. Some, maybe most, are assembled or come together over a shared enjoyment of music and generally end up as either a hot directionless mess or a populist project that serves as a means for the artists involved to perhaps send fans towards their already established projects.

Empire State Bastard are a different kind of animal. Despite his day job in Biffy Clyro, vocalist Simon Neil has never been shy about his love of all things heavy, so when Mike Vennart (Oceansize) joined as a touring guitarist in 2010, the pair formed a bond over a shared loved of everything noise/grind. This is a recording project that has been years in the making.

Formed around this nucleus the band, roped in Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer, Grip Inc. plus 100 other projects) who has become a bit of a drummer-for-hire in recent times, but what a drummer! And what they have recorded is a bit of everything from Mr. Bungle-type chaos to flat out grind madness and everything that can be wedged in between and considered heavy.

The opening 1-2 of “Harvest” and “Blusher” flit back and forth like a lunatic rocking in a padded cell and screaming for some kind of internal peace. “Moi?” lulls the listener into a false sense of comfort with Neil singing cleanly over a quiet riff before spiralling out of control, then reeling itself back into the quiet discomfort it started with.

From here we hit album highlight “Tired, Aye?” that sees Neil screaming over nothing more than a flurry of Lombardo beats that are recorded so clearly, every drum fill and cymbal hit is accounted for. The racket created to this point of the album and not one track has sounded like the one preceding and without a dud second amongst them.

This rich vein of musical gold continues through to the end of the album until the band draw it out with on “The Looming” attemopts to sedate the chaos that came before it. The only bum notes are hit on purpose and there is barely any time to take a breath amongst the mania-inducing swirling musical chaos throughout the albums entirety.

So much passion has gone into the project that this album has something for almost every kind of listener. The only people it will confuse are likely fans of Biffy Clyro coming to check out what all the fuss is about, and really, heavy music was never about the trendsetters was it? This project is more about musical freedom than gaining fans en masse.

Buy Rivers Of Heresy on CD or vinyl