Slomatics – Future Echo Returns (Review)

Slomatics are a sludge/doom band from the UK. This is their fifth album.

A brief overview of Future Echo Returns – doom, sludge, psychedelia, stoner, feedback, atmosphere, synths, heaviness, riffs, leads, solos, metal, songs. More than anything this last one; this album is about songs. Damn good ones too.

In addition to the songs themselves, Slomatics are all about the melodies, really. Sure, they hide some of this in mammoth-sized guitars and huge distorted riffery, but essentially, at their core, they like a good melody and use these liberally throughout the 40 minute playing time.

With a professional, strong production, the guitars sound warm and fuzzed-up, ready to squash the listener with their heaviosity. Everything else sounds balanced around these colossal instruments.

For such a heavy album though, it’s sometimes easy to miss this aspect of their sound, as it’s so all-pervading that you tend to concentrate on the colourful synths , melodies and vocals. This makes for an unusual listening experience, but one that’s very positive. The songs manage to connect with the listener on a visceral, emotional level, hypnotising with heaviness and drawing in with emotive melodies and singing.

The vocals don’t appear until the second track, Electric Breath, and when they do they reveal themselves in their luscious, powerful glory. These are impressively performed throughout the album and seem perfectly in line with the atmosphere and melodies of the music.

Future Echo Returns is just so very well-constructed that the playing time just flies by. The songs are highly memorable and show a band completely at the top of their game.

Basically this is an absolute top quality album. Anyone into sludge/doom/stoner metal would be advised to get this. Now.