Band:	Earth Ship
Album:	Withered
Style:	Sludge metal
Release date:	September 2014

01. Sanguine
02. Serpent Cult
03. The Garden
04. Dead Faint
05. Adrift
06. Throne Of Bones
07. Veil Of Gloom
08. Lament Of Torment
09. Emerald Blades
10. Withered

Former The Ocean drummer Jan Oberg and his neat little band from Berlin, Germany, Earthship, have exploded onto the sludge/stoner landscape with their third release, Withered - a short but substantial 30-minute piece of music that's broken down to 10 archaic and bludgeoning riff clinics. The tunes are catchy, likable, and most of all, heavy.

The rhythmic layered guitars are the highlight and centerpiece for the entire album. The aggressive nature of those notes wreak havoc and flourish with maximum dynamic results. Lush textures, bleeding feedback, and furious chugging riffs are at the heart of this very gritty and hard-hitting music. Deep bass and passionate pounding on the drums are additives used in this abrasive and subterranean structured formula. It seems in this day and age of metal music, especially in this genre, bands cater to the "more is more" philosophy. Not so here; Withered doesn't use 10-minute marathon set pieces to get its point across. This is quite a change for me, as I have always endeared longer and more complex songs. Instead, Earthship wrap a set of copious genre aesthetics into a flurry of songs that are over before you know it. It's music that lodges sludge, stoner, and groove metal capacities into short but meaningful musical expressions.

The production is exquisite, and for Earthship I am sure being a member of the Pelagic Records team helps big-time. The instruments and scream-style vocals are in perfect harmonization. The sparse guitar solos lay perfectly underneath the extent of those glossy guitar tones. The sound is very "clean", much in the way of how Mastodon and A Storm Of Light do things. Take a half-hour of your time and check out this visceral piece of adamant sludge metal. Withered is more than the sum of its parts and worth every second.