Shun – Shun
Release Date: 4th June 2021
Label: Small Stone
Bandcamp
Genre: Noise Rock, Alt-Rock, Progressive Rock, Stoner Rock.
FFO: Cave In, Handsome, Tool, HUM.
Review By: Paul Franklin
Before the first note is even played, Shun deserve your respect. Pandemic isolation has forced a lot of us into working from home. However, when most of us have been kept busy strategically planning suitably intellectual backgrounds for our Zoom meetings and stressing about the extra wear and tear on the kettle, this North Carolinian quartet managed to record their debut album. Guitarist/backing vocalist Scott Brandon at least had the luxury of a basement studio, bassist Jeff Baucom and drummer Rob Elzey having to lay down their pounding rhythms in the latter’s garage, while Matt Whitehead (guitars/vocals) recorded with his amps stuffed in his bedroom cupboard.
It was well worth the effort as the resulting album is a dynamic, melodious cacophony of industrial heavy rock. Not the vitriolic, corrosive industrial noise of Ministry et al, this is more akin to the din in a factory where large, heavy bits of metal are hit with even larger, heavier bits of metal. If the music of a band like Kyuss suggests tumbleweed blowing across the dusty desert floor under the warm glow of a sinking sun, then Shun is the sound of an empty oil drum rolling across the stained and cracked concrete floor of a desolate warehouse under the harsh, unsympathetic glare of a flickering fluorescent tube.
But there is still beauty to be found. The guitarists do a fantastic job of sounding like they are knee deep in an oily puddle grinding riff after dirty riff, yet there are moments in each track when they ease back enough for the surface of the puddle to settle and the rainbow iridescence to shimmer brightly. Underneath it’s all kept alive by the black, pounding heartbeat provided by the battering rhythm section.
The opening riff of Heese (featuring a guest spot from Lamb of God’s Mark Morton) could strip paint from 100 yards, whilst the noise/alt-rock influences on Sleepwalking make it sound like At The Drive In jamming with Helmet. At Most and Machina drag you in with a hypnotic claustrophobia before the doors to the warehouse are thrown wide at the end of day and Once Again allows the last of the sun’s dying rays to warm your tired bones.
The band name was inspired by a Bruce Lee quote “Adapt what is useful, reject (shun) what is useless, and add what is specifically your own” The foursome have certainly done that. It’d be very interesting to see what they can come up with when they’re all allowed in the same room!
(4 / 5)
