CD: “The Narrator” & “Meteor Blade”

Greenhorn/Urchin split Release

I have made no secret of how much I rate Greenhorn, I’ve seen them live more times than I can count and am honoured to call them friends. So when Chinners invited me to review the new song I jumped at the chance. The last single they did, they asked me to put together a video for them;

…so this time I got to listen to The Narrator without a “work” head on.

It’s only one track to so it won’t take long; wrong! It’s twenty minutes (thank God they didn’t ask for another video!) but what a twenty minutes it is. Starts off with traditional Greenhorn doomy loooong riffs which morph into feedback under which the drums come gently thumping and the narrator starts telling us of a ‘Lovecraftian beast’. This amps up the tempo and the riffs and we get a cool head-banging session going, then slow. What’s this? Clean singing? The closest we’ve had clean singing in a Greenhorn song is “Witches Bridle” but this is different, this sounds awesome. We still get the familiar guttural vocals a little later, but I am pleasantly surprised by this new direction. The track ends with a one-minute fadeout which automatically makes me press repeat.

On the strength of this one (long) song the new album is going to be a killer. This track had an overall progressive feel to it-multi-layered, with a powerful melodic underlay to it and the experimentation with new vocal styles; (not only from Sid but also is that Mandy I hear in the background?) and AJ’s technical guitar work, makes it one album to stick at the top of your wish list.

Good news is you can download this bad boy on a pay what you want deal (go on, pay something!) on Bandcamp.

“Urchin” are a band I’m not familiar with so I was looking forward to having my first taste of their music. “Meteor Blade” isn’t quite as long as The Narrator, clocking in at roughly 13 minutes. But it is a heavy slice of doom-laden riffs which kick in big time about 3 minutes in after a lilting melodic intro. The vocals are suitably fierce and sound as though the singer has been eating sandpaper.

We get light and dark hues in the track; rampaging riffing melting into slower tempo, which in turn ramps up as the song progresses. Disjointed guitars swathed in echoey sound effects bring the track to a close. Whilst in my opinion the Greenhorn side of the split is superior (I am slightly biased) Urchin warrant a delving into their back issues, which I shall endeavour to do at Bandcamp.

Greenhorn are
Sid – Bass
AJ – Guitar
Mandy – Drums

Urchin are
Adam Mundorf – Guitars
Eliese Dorsay – Drums

Links
https://www.facebook.com/GreenHornUK
https://www.facebook.com/abandnamedurchin

Words and Pictures by Dan O’Gara