Tuesday 29 December 2020

Looprider - MOON (Album Review)


Release Date: 4th December 2020. Record Label: Self Released. Format: DD

Moon - Tracklisting

Moon - 30:32

Members

Ryotaro - heavy guitar, noise, synthesizer
Haruka - fuzz guitar
Sean - drums

Review

Moon is the new album from Japanese Psych Sludge Rockers Looprider who impressed me last year with their last album Ouroboros. The band return with Moon which is a single 30 minute song which sees Looprider expand their sound heard on their last record. The song is quite hard to describe in places with Looprider playing many different styles of music on this song,

The album focuses purely on Doom, Drone and Sludge Metal as its primary way of channeling those aggressive sounds the album contains, The record does take time to fully get going with Looprider playing a slow style of Doom/Drone Metal which is quite minimalistic for the first few moments. It’s not the most exciting starts but things soon become better when a splash of heavy drums and guitars appear and a FUZZY reverb promises much better things to come.

The song is purely instrumental and Looprider show their talent for creating harsh noises against a cold black Doom Metal backdrop. The album may disappoint some who were expecting a riff-centric musical adventure like their last album.

You will need time and patience for this album to fully appreciate it. There’s virtually no fast-paced riffs at all with Looprider focusing more on their Drone based identity of their overall sound.

Japanese Metal bands always tend to do things differently to other bands within the scene and Looprider is no different. If you dig the more experimental sounds of BORIS then Moon has lots of great themes and ideas to darken your soul for 30 thrilling and bleak minutes.

Moon is a very good album indeed and it’s good to see Looprider doing something different with their music yet again. I will admit I enjoy the music they created for Ouroboros compared to Moon but that doesn;’t stop this being a superb record in it’s own right.

Words by Steve Howe

Links

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