Band:	The Lumberjack Feedback
Album:	Mere Mortals
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	April 26, 2019
A review by:	RaduP

01. Therapy?
02. Kill! Kill! Kill! Die! Die! Die!
03. New Order (Of The Ages) - Part I
04. New Order (Of The Ages) - Part II
05. Wind's Last Blow
06. A White Horse Called Death
07. Kobe (The Doors Of Spirit)

France's The Lumberjack Feedback probably rushed out the making of their lineup, since they accidentally recruited two drummers instead of a singer. A sludge band with no singer?! Two drummers?!

You heard that right, ladies and gentlemen, a sludge/doom band with no singer and two drummers, which is, admittedly, quite a weird lineup to have. Sure, they have the usual two guitars and one bass on the side, so I guess it's not that far outside the box. But The Lumberjack Feedback have been delivering instrumental sludge for quite some time and have done a pretty damn good job at it, so maybe it's time not to judge their lineup so harshly. Maybe it wasn't an accident.

Let me start by saying that most of the songs would benefit from having a vocal line. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is. But to give the needed credit, I think that would kinda diminish the mystique that they have, and at the same time I can't deny that it's pretty tough to make music like this be engaging without a vocal line to follow, but the bastards did it. Granted, the songs that feel close to a post-metal sound akin to Pelican and Russian Circles feel a lot more natural, like "New Order Of The Ages - Part I", so looking at the music through more of a post-metal perspective instead of a sludge perspective can make the experience much more hypnotizing.

Because the music is pretty hypnotizing and fuzzy. Not in the stoner light fuzzy way, but a very rhythmic build-up of heavy distorted fuzz from the bass, which, despite being the only instrument not part of a pair, often feels like it has the biggest impact. The drum duo can be hard to notice unless you know beforehand that there are two drummers, at which point the enhanced sound of the drums seems to be more noticeable, since most of the time they seem to play in tandem. But even when they don't, there are very few album like this that have such a strong drum presence.

But even if you look at it as a sludge album without vocals or as an instrumental post-metal album, it still feels like the songwriting doesn't exactly scratch all the necessary itches, and the guitars, usually the ones that ought to be doing most of the heavy lifting, don't feel like they're really putting all the possible effort in. A lot of the rather repetitive sections would have worked without problem with a vocal line over it, but without that, it feels like those should have been avoided or made more interesting somehow. So even with the great drum and bass presence to set them apart, The Lumberjack Feedback still have yet to come out with their masterpiece. But they proved time and time again that they do have the building blocks for it. We ought not to have unrealistic expectations; after all, they're mere mortals.