Hull - Sole Lord

The solitary gently-strummed Spanish-tinged guitar that opens this record is a not-entirely-convincing attempt at misleading the listener before the inevitable arrival of colossal downtuned riffs and crashing cymbals (a prerequisite for any band with a pointy logo). Appropriately for a band named after a University town, Hull are well-educated in the school of metal, proving themselves to be as equally adept at Melvins-derived abstract, skull-crushing sludge as they are at proggy-guitar workouts or spiralling thrash-cum-punk riffs. Droning feedback serves as lengthy interludes between many of the tracks, and all istopped off, of course, with the necessary guttural roars and growls. The only downside is that, among the abrupt tempo changes and riffathons, the influence of Linkin Park's popular brand of nu-metal is apparent in the form of Hull's second vocalist’s forced pre-pubescent wailing. Sole Lord is more often a hodgepodge collection of modern metal's best bits rather than an effort that forges new ground, but it's a damn good one at that.