The Larches – Nihilistic Majesties
The Larches – Nihilistic Majesties
Self Release
Release date: 24/07/26
Review by: Jon Deaux
7/10
This is despair with drums. Should there ever be a suicide hotline in Teesside where people can listen to hold music, I am pretty sure this is going to be it.
These dealers of doom have decided to create an album that sounds like funeral music that got its wheels slashed while trying to park at Wetherspoons – and this is about as high of praise as I could have possibly offered them. The Larches named their new EP ‘Nihilistic Majesties,’ which is quite an appropriate title for five songs – just like the word ‘unsinkable’ was for the Titanic, and the boat went down with all the passengers having full glasses of alcohol.
The song ‘Raxidermy’ kicks off the EP in a fashion similar to somebody hauling a huge wardrobe through the fire exit one step at a time, and amidst the noise, you can hear Noah Annandale convincing God of something and doing it even when He disagrees. And here is the thing – this EP is not about riffs but rather a slow-mo car crash with broken glass and broken bones flying everywhere. And after the wreckage settles a little, the engine starts for another round so the people in the back seat who missed it could experience it too.
‘Smother the Hero’ – the first single from the album – sounds like somebody suffocating all of the hope with a pillow. Crushing, slow, and relentless – this is the auditory representation of realizing that your eulogy is being written in real-time by four men from Stockton armed with detuned guitars. And the ‘sermon from the void’ that Annandale mentions certainly is not the marketing catchphrase – the man indeed sounds like he is preaching to a long-dead congregation but unaware of it.
‘Corrosion of Consciousness’ – and yes, I saw what you did there, and no, you are not forgiven – is definitely the ugliest and most claustrophobic song in the record. The riffs are packed one on top of another, like the trash bags piled outside a flat that has been vacant for weeks. There is something truly disturbing in it that would make Eyehategod nod approvingly from the smoking area, something that is not building the tension but rather pressing on your chest until you give up on questions.
And then ‘Drought’ arrives and somehow manages to change the gear and sound even gloomier than anything else – dry-throated and ominous like the band had run out of water and decided to create an entire track devoted to it rather than buying some. This is the nearest this record gets to the ballad, but only if you consider a hostage negotiation that goes badly for everybody involved – including the hostage – a ballad.
And then – ‘Dopeslut.’ Sorry, I did not think of the title; I simply noted it down without looking too hard into the matter. It closes the EP in the same scorched-earth fashion like the rest of the record – like the last cigarette smoked before setting a fire to the building, which is quite an appropriate thing for the theme of the whole album.
The Larches have created their most coherent and focused version of themselves in this EP – five songs, no fillers, no mercy, and no concern with how you feel today. This is the sludge metal with the alt-rock soul, or perhaps the other way around – and whichever way it is, this is an album that does not ask you for love but dares you to survive it.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Raxidermy
02. Smother the Hero
03. Corrosion of Conscience
04. Drought
05. Dopeslut
LINKS:
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