Manatees - Icarus, the sunclimber

Based on the legend of Icarus, “Sunclimber” is the follow up to the well-received “The Forever Ending Jitter Quest of Slow Hand Chuckle Walker: An Introduction to the Manatee”, and it is a slow, heavy and distorted voyage. It lacks not only variation, but contrasts and an identity. What the Manatees are doing isn’t really different from the rest of the sludge metal bands. This whole “hey, let’s play a heavy riff and repeat it over and over again for 10 minutes” has been done a thousand times before. The vocals, buried and distant, sound like most bands of the genre. But the whole “package” isn’t bad. Far from it. It’s just completely forgettable.

Originality is an important factor, when listening to an album. It is not essential, but it is important…

The Neurosis influence is more than obvious, but again, sometimes originality is not the problem; Year of No Light’s “Nord” is the perfect example of that. The first three tracks, “ Of Wax and Wing”;”The Sunclimber” and “Hyperion Altitude” are weaker and more forgettable than the other three; “Untitled”, “False Sun” , “Out of the sky, into the gutter” are better and more consistent. These last three songs are not revolutionary by any means, but they sound a lot better compared to the first half of the album; maybe it is because of the acoustic guitars, the spacey vocals or the tribal drumming, that add a nice element to the music . I am confident that this trio has a lot more to give, let’s just hope that their next release sounds closer to the second half of the album than the first.

As I said before, “Icarus, the Sunclimber” is a heavy, ugly and slow. Just like a manatee.

5.5/10