Amazing review from the UK's "Sound Shock"

Review cliché number 28 gazillion: any review of any vaguely technical metal album will at some point mention jazz interludes. This is a cliché that gets trotted out as often as the joke (or more accurately, fact) about Sarah Jessica Parker looking like an anorexic horse. But for all you chin-stroking beret-wearing clove-cigarette-in-a-poncy-holder-smoking jazz cats, there is some proper jazz influence right here, in 'My Sweetheart, The Whore': a mazy fretless bass run that evokes the spirit of Jaco Pastorius. And it's not the only highlight on a record that practically blinds you with them.

Paying as much heed to genres as England do to actually trying to win football matches in an exciting manner, Name are much in the ilk of War From A Harlots Mouth, with a metal take on a hardcore sensibility, but they push the breakdowns into even more sludgy territory, and just as suddenly turn on a sixpence into something that wouldn't be out of place on Mastodon record. The 'Empathic Communicator' suite showcases everything in the progressive metal genre that every right thinking metalhead should value in their music: power, intelligence and confidence. The forth part even has drone influences, for fuck's sake.

And here's the rub: such is the skill of this trio that it's all completely seamless. No joke, you can't spot a single weld line, just a single continuous vision, so when they shift grindcore to doom influences in 'Mare', and then onto jazz-blues on the following 'The Sycophant, The Saint And The Gamefox', you don't notice, neither care. The only clichéd thing about this record you should be hearing is a "one of the albums of the year" plaudit.


Reviewed by Steve Jones
'Internet Killed The Audio Star' is out now on Lifeforce