LO! - The Gleaners - Metal Epidemic

LO! – The Gleaners
Release Date: 7th April 2023
Label: Pelagic Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Blackened Sludge, Post-Metal, Metal, Hardcore.
FFO: Cranial, Conjurer, Herod, The Old Wind, Lesser Glow, Yashira, Cult Leader.
Review By: Mark Young

Returning after their 2017 Album, Vestigial, LO! Bring you The Gleaners, an intense 41-minute barrage that brings a myriad of themes together in an explosive package of music. I loved this and consider myself very lucky that I have stumbled onto them, because they are one of the best things I’ve heard in ages.

Our Fouling Larder starts this 41-minute kicking with a short and sweet combination of slow riffs and double bass, replete with vocals that sound as they are being drawn internally from Sam Dillon.

Salting the Earth follows with the same anger and intensity, mixing hardcore and traditional guitar attacks before sliding into the break point. LO! Are angry and in no mood for discussion.

Deafening Bleats of Apathy hits you with a distorted vocal before the aggressive vocal of earlier in a one-two punch combination. This one gives you early phase Mastodon vibes (which I love) but with a more urgent and direct attack.

Rat King, hurries along as though they treated it as a cathartic experience, all with the guitars hitting from all angles. When they break in this one, it’s like a different song has started, getting slower and slower before it falls apart.

The Gleaners, which was a practice completed in medieval times when the lowest of society would be allowed to sift through the refuse of a harvested field for means of survival. LO! Have applied that definition to modern times and set it to a gut-stomper of a tune. Over its length it navigates quiet, heavy, melodic without sounding pasted together. It’s an absolute beast of a song.

Even in the quiet, more introspective moments, there is no reduction in how intense they are. On Pareidolia there is a circular guitar passage that could be described like 60s surf but with these venomous growling over the top of it. There is a tension that builds from this as the guitar changes tack and the vocals step back to a spoken refrain, reducing in volume as it makes its way to the end, almost like a lullaby.

Kleptoparasite starts the three-song ending, with a constant pummelling and then stop on a penny chord changes then back again. There is always the constant melody running through it, even in the heaviest parts. You know when you really love a song when you want to start playing it. Cannibal Culture wants to stomp you, crushing as it reaches its climax, and then it’s onto Mammons Horn. This just rips with that propulsive drum rhythm that instantly grabs you as guitars give way to bass and is a monumental album closer. It’s that sort of song that gets its hooks in you and says you are going nowhere, sunshine!

From some of the titles, they have looked to events past to really channel and provide a focused middle finger to what they feel as society ills. What these guys do is manage it in relatively short songs (there are two at 8 and 7 minutes respectively) is impressive, and for me the mark of a great album is the number of ideas they have and somehow make them fit into each song. It is unbelievable that they have got so many things happening without losing the listener. There is no way you will get everything in one go, it demands repeated play, it is heavy, fast, slow and will satisfy anyone who loves extreme music. It has something that will appeal to everyone, which in my minds makes The Gleaners one of the best albums of the year.