Callous Hands – Earth Mover
Band: Callous Hands
Tittle: Earth Mover
Label: Independent
Release date: 12 March 2021
Country: England
Format Reviewed: Digital Promo
Callous Hands hail Birmingham and as we know the reputation of bands from the area have with greats like Napalm Death, Benediction, Bolt Thrower and of course Black Sabbath, with this kind of heritage and quality of bands in the local scene young and old there comes to allot of expectation!
Do Callous Hands hit the mark? let’s dive in!
Being only 3 track EP and short running time as you can imagine they aren’t waiting around to hit you with everything they got!EP opens with the title track “Earth Mover”, This track has early Meshuggah vibes for me with pushing grooves and riffs accompanied with gruff screams and semi-tech breakdowns that don`t feel out of place or thrown in, a decent start!
“Heed The Call” is next with lovely almost Arabic-sounding clean guitars it plucks its way into your eardrums with a melancholy lullaby then suddenly SCREAMS! This sounds very urgent intro but I dug it! soon flowing into the tempo-driven riffage and fantastic drum work once again, There’s different energy on this track to the first and I am preferring this one more personally! the solo at the end was lovely and shows a more emotive side to the band then into techy dissonant urgency again.
Now onto 3rd and finally “Orchestrated Primal Screams” starting with an orchestrated scream… More of the same as what came before on track 2 but more focused on the vocal melody which I quite enjoyed and it works well within the track which makes me wonder if this will be more prominent on their newer material moving forward? I hope so! made a good end to the EP.
This EP shows great potential for these guys and is a good debut plus the musicianship is top-notch and really shows their ability! the only criticism I have is there needed to be another song to show the band’s range and ability more as 3 tracks isn’t enough and I felt a little unsatisfied, but maybe that’s the point? making you want more…
7/10 Kieran
7/10 Victory is possible
**Please support the underground! It’s vital to the future of our genre.**
#WeAreBlessedAltarZine
#TheZineSupportingTheUnderground
