In 2019 Lower Slaughter had released their latest full-length Some Things Take Work and since then the Sussex band spent several years quietly working on new material while regrouping after the departure of original singer Sinead Young. The band ultimately decided to switch around and previous bass player Barney Wakefield moved to vocals while welcoming new bass player James Gardiner to the project.
What came out of this new rearrangement on this album is a considerably more expansive sound ranging from full on noise-stoner to more garage songs with not a particular stress about the cohesion between the different “moods” of the tracks, but letting the album roll out freely instead. Deep Living, has been recorded and mixed by Wayne Adams and mixed by Sam Grant, has been released by Brighton based label Human Worth with a portion of profits donated to PANDAS Foundation.
Photo Credit: Anna Stabell
‘Year of the Ox’ stomps in with some incessant drums, eerie vocals and saturated guitars that match perfectly the repetitive lyrics. What followed is a complete switch, the band goes garage/noise here with ‘Take a Seat’, a catchy happy track with a slower breakdown and ‘The Lights Were Not Familiar’ a rhythmically intriguing song with some soulful Brit guitar riffs.
‘Dear Phantom’ drags you back into dark waters, this pure stoner track showcase the whole ensemble’s technicality, the band is tight and is heavy.
What keeps going on in this album is a very clear alternance between darker mood stoner tracks and rock and melodic tunes which is definitely one of their marks but can also become predictable after a while. Some of the heavy layered tracks sometimes overcome their stay with a more than 6 minutes length, an example of that is ‘Memories of Road’ that could quickly make you zone out and lose focus.
Plenty of different influences are evident in this record and allowed the band to surprise us with tracks like ‘The Shape of Fire’ that stands out for its melancholic guitars and spoken words almost moving to post-hardcore territory and ‘Motions’ with super driven and a very authentic vocal performance, while the electronic noise filler ‘We Bring Power’ could have been left in the draft.
Deep Living features some remarkable songwriting, however some of the tracks just fade away during the listen and the sounds of both their doom/stoner and garage tracks seldom result as something heard before, and it’s lacking that extra Je ne sais quoi that keeps you hooked.
As for many of those who love to crank up their distortion and play repetitive noisy riffs, it’s very likely that this band is probably better experienced live. Overall the passion of Lower Slaughter oozes throughout their music and their experience and talent resulted in an album that is greatly crafted, produced and executed,