ALBUM REVIEW: Cloakroom - "Time Well"

By: Ernesto Aguilar

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 18/08/2017

Label:  Relapse Records

The songwriting and arrangements are as distinctive and original as they come, especially for the subgenres Cloakroom claims. You will get treated to plenty that fits a stoner/sludge aesthetic that you are used to hearing. Yet, by the time you reach "The Sun Won't Let Us Go" midway through, chances are you will embrace where the band is heading with all this. But it is nevertheless magnificent.

"Time Well"CD//DD//LP track listing

1. Gone But Not Entirely

2. Big World

3. Concrete Gallery

4. Seedless Star

5. Sickle Moon Blues

6. Hymnal

7. The Sun Won't Let Us Go

8. Time Well

9. 52Hz Whale

10. The Passenger

The Review:

Some of the best music defies description and can be defiant in a manner that can be both sublime and utterly enraging. You think you can put a band in a convenient mental category, as we are wont to do, until its members aptly demonstrate you just cannot do so. This fluidity is loved by many music fans. It can also make others completely panic.

Enter Cloakroom. This outfit presents fleeting instances of doom and stoner rock. However, it offers the strongest pop sensibility of any group on which you would otherwise bestow those categories. On its sophomore release, "Time Well," the Northwest Indiana-based band creates an impressive though hard to describe recording.

"Further Out," Cloakroom'sdebut, received accolades for its quality as a heavier side of indie rock package. It was moody and sorrowful at moments, reflective and tense elsewhere. Truly a promising first outing by most standards, and loved by many critics and fans. You almost have to think so many eyes generates more than a little pressure on this young band to follow through on an equally rich offering.

Fortunately, "Time Well" is an admirable progression from what we heard in "Further Out." "Gone But Not Entirely," the new disc's first track, treats you to a sound you will grow to love across all ten cuts – that kickoff indie swag that summons the Replacements among others making way for thick guitars and a plodding bass. It is real ride at first, because you might expect this is all going one way – and who can blame you, considering metal label Relapse put this out – until your ears get a delightful sonic curveball. But it is nevertheless magnificent.

Other tracks abide by this indie/heavy model, which is nevertheless a great experience. Catch "Concrete Gallery"and "Sickle Moon Blues"among the best of such songs. The songwriting and arrangements are distinctive and original as they come, especially for the subgenres Cloakroomclaims. You will get treated to plenty that fits a stoner/sludge aesthetic that you are used to hearing. Yet, by the time you reach "The Sun Won't Let Us Go" midway through, chances are you will embrace where the band is heading with all this. Those mental categories we all seek will disappear for a bit in favor of such a superlative story arc.

Cloakroom succeeds as a one-of-a-kind sort of group. You have to admire its members' courage at stepping out of bounds, and for breaking the sophomore slump with a release you will not soon forget.

"Time Well" is available here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

EP PREMIERE: "The brutal and the harmonious" Rootwork present "Some Of Us May Never Bloom"

Creating a sound that is as brutal as it is harmonic, Rootworkhave embraced many of the elements of modern metal music perfectly taking the listener on a journey through metal, stoner rock, prog, post-hardcore and doom-pop over five faultlessly comprised songs.

Rootwork immediately set their stall out on opening track ‘Trust’; hefty guitar riffs are intensified by pointed vocals, flawless harmonies and a booming, incessant drum beat. While ‘Ozymandias’ is like being lost in a sonic maze, riffs twisting and turning throughout, as Rootwork pulverise their way through just over six minutes worth of mesmerising melodies, before closing with a gorgeous dream-like outro. Intelligent, challenging, explosive yet intricate, and technically gifted, Rootwork are a band whose resonance should be felt throughout the alternative rock community much like contemporaries such as Baroness and Torche.

Comprised of Max Woodhams (guitar, vocals), Jamie Benzine (bass, backing vocals) and Chris Booth(drums, vocals), the band formed in Farnborough towards the end of 2013 having come together through their mutual love of heavy, melodic and complex rock music. In December 2015 they released their first full length EP picking up support from the likes of Tom Robinson, BBC 6 Music and BBC Introducing. With the wind in their sails the band quickly followed the EP release up with single “Code Talker” with the video premiering on Team Rock.

Now, with a new EP Some Of Us May Never Bloom set for release on 18th November 2016 via Ubiquity Project Records the wait is over and you can stream the EP in full below