Well, it certainly has been a hot minute since we last heard from Yautja, with a full length and an EP that was almost a full-length around 2015, and then silence until they recently released a split with Nepalese grindsters Chepang. Thankfully, that heralded a return for Yautja. That's around the same time I got into the band, so I arrived just in time to anticipate that. Since I don't have any more background to give you, I will inform you that apparently the name of the band comes from the name of the alien race in Predator.
There's something a bit unique in Yautja's sound and the way they approach sludge. I said that they embrace the hardcore part of the sound, but that is underestimating just how that blend works. It's not just hardcore, but there's noise rock and mathcore and death metal and grindcore and crust punk. And what Yautja really succeed at, is making slow sludge merge well with fast hardcore, into an album that mostly sits in the mid-pace. It's both fast slugde (by sludge standards) and slow hardcore (by hardcore) standards, but as a whole neither of those feel really out of their element, even as the band moves completely into fast and slow paced moments.
And in that blend of styles, the result isn't as pummeling as either sludge of hardcore has proven itself to be capable of being, but there is a different sense of frustrating aggression in The Lurch. The textures are thunderous, but they're not necessarily crushing. It's groovy and angry (with an absolutely vitriolic vocal performance). And most of all, it is incredibly rhythmically complex, courtesy of how much of a presence mathcore has in this. The riffs are all complex, but it is the drumming that is often most nauseatingly impressive. It's discordant, but not dissonant, even though it absolutely could have been. But in a way, this doesn't make The Lurch lose any of its punch.
So it's a very specific kind of hardcore influence that informs Yautja's take on sludge, and The Lurch is a perfect reminder of why six years is just too much to wait for such a banger.
