Trudger - Void Quest - review
Trudger - Void Quest - review
Tracklist
01. Merciless Sabre02. Occupied Frequency
03. Illusory Path
04. Tethered System
05. God Rest
06. Battle Hardened
07. Wind Cleaver
08. Sleep Purge
09. Bile Elixir
A review by
musclassia September 16, 2025
It’s funny how bands sometimes end up breaking similarly long dormant spells within close proximity to one another. Back in 2019-2020, several prog bands simultaneously remembered that it was legal to release albums post-2006. Similarly, only a week after Eden Circus ended an 11-year drought after their debut album, Barnsley’s Trudger also followed up a 2014 debut record with a long-awaited sophomore release. The sparsity of their online presence makes it unclear what caused such a long gap, but an album as excellent as Void Quest will leave genre fans ecstatic that they finally returned.
The aforementioned scarcity of information does potentially render information on the band’s personnel outdated, but assuming that Jack Kavanagh and Richard Matheson are still the band’s guitar duo, that makes two band members that have had spells in Dvne since the release of Dormiveglia, and there are certainly moments across the record that resemble parts of Dvne’s repertoire; however, the more obvious comparison is an influence of both bands, as Mastodon circa Remission-Blood Mountain clearly inspired the combination of brawling, dense riffs with intricate southern rock-laced lead guitar licks and solos. One final band that came to mind is The Gorge; while Void Quest doesn’t exhibit the same sheer maddening rhythmic complexity of that band’s math/jazz-inspired music, Trudger do hit a similarly sweet spot between dazzling technicality, primal fury and irresistible hooky heaviness.
The band’s debut was in a similar vein, but did lean more towards post-metal in parts, while this new release offers concise proggy sludge that is focused solely on delivering massive riff after massive riff; excluding the interludes from the debut, the longest song on Void Quest is a minute shy of Dormiveglia’s shortest track. There’s very little time wasted across the record, and Trudger fly out the gates with a delicious fuzzy groove laced with those southern rock-tinged leads; opening track “Merciless Sabre” subsequently dabbles with mellower arpeggiated guitar textures, scintillating technical lead guitar riffs, and big rolling Dvne-esque heaviness across less than four minutes, accompanied by the hoarse growled vocal style that dominates the record.
There’s hints of variety across the 35-minute runtime of Void Quest, ranging from the brawling rowdiness kicking off “Occupied Frequency” to the doomy dissonance-tinged trudging right after in “Illusory Path”. Later on, “Tethered System” is a mostly mid-tempo effort characterized by consistently explorative lead guitar meandering synchronizing with dirty riffing beneath, while “Wind Cleaver” offers another relative surge of speed. Ultimately though, the main inclination when describing this record is to just wax lyrical about the constant stream of standout moments that pepper pretty much all of its songs.
On that note, I will avoid making this review longer than the album, but will highlight but a few of the juiciest songs and passages. After that initial bruising aggression, “Occupied Frequency” shifts rapidly between thundering driving grooves woven with technical leads, slower prog-sludge gloom, and awesome emphatic riffing that demands headbanging, all in just over 2 minutes. “God Rest” is a bit longer, but equally rammed with brilliance, spanning Blood Mountain-esque licks, warmer expansive arpeggiated textures, and huge epic slow riffs, with multiple hooks in this one song that other bands would happily retire after coming up with. “Battle Hardened” is also an absolute riff-fest, at different times bruising, slick, groovy, or just straight epic.
I could go on, but instead I’ll implore anyone who has got this far to just stick this album on and revel in its excellence. 2025 has overall been a steady but unexceptional year for sludge, but the back-to-back release of Farseer (USA)’s Portals To Cosmic Womb and now Void Quest across successive weekends has well and truly set the genre alight. I sincerely hope it will take less than a decade to hear more from Trudger.
Written on 16.09.2025 by
Written on 16.09.2025 by
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Never heard of this band before. Gave it a few spins and this album sounds great, thank you for the review. There are moments when it feels like this is alternative timeline, where Mastodon embraced more agressive style instead of going into more mainstream friendly direction after Remission. But at the same time it also has identitiy of its own.
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Posts: 9632
Yes, the music is great, but I can't get over how cool that cover art looks. It's like the cover of a book that's already falling apart you'd find in your father's library.
---- Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking One day there will be no heart at all?
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Posts: 7927
I posted many times earlier here that anything on the riffs instantly hook me up. Will take a swing tonite. Good review, musclassia
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