Review: Black Moth - The Killing Jar

 Something seems to be happening in Leeds right now. Some sort of spirit of harsh grimness is haunting through the city streets and affecting all the happy little bands to come from the area and spreading the power of rock and roll at the same time. Some of the latest bands to emerge from the city manage have managed to amalgamate the best elements of rock and metal music and deliver it in a performance that is destructively brutal. There's Pulled Apart By Horses, Hawk Eyes and now there is the latest addition to turn Leeds into a bleaker Seattle, Black Moth. And on their debut The Killing Jar, the brutal rock and roll comes crashing back.

 The group clearly display their perfection in the art of finding the balance between heavy and being melodic in this album while bringing in their influences from various aspects of heavy music, with opener The Articulate Dead having the punk rush of Black Flag and the subsequent track and lead single Blackbirds Fall hitting listeners hard with slabs of crunching stoner riffage reminiscent to Sasquatch's Dragonfly. In essence, with their influences from hardcore and stoner rock music, there's never any kind of serenity or beauty to be found.
 The performance from all involved is rooted in murkiness as the grim tones of guitar found on Spit Out Your Teeth and Plastic Blaze shows little sense of comfort or joy in their performance as delirious riffs from Jim Swainston and Nico Carew carry a spirit of the ethics of punk to raise hell and blaze with glory, which are complimented by the dirty vocal hooks of frontwoman Harriet Bevan, whose performance is every bit as swaggering in it's tone as it is haunting and once, again, her ability to find a balance between these two tones makes the perfect voice of stoner rock.
 Greater still is the recurring manner in which the band can constantly use this array of feedback drenched riffs and melodies in an ever creative and dynamic style. The merge in style between the frantic and doomy can be seen in the likes of Blind Faith and epic closer Honey Lung, songs that could well give Corrosion of Conformity a run for their money in the constant punk and stoner rock dynamic. Surprisingly, even throughout the sheer scale of chaos and doom this album creates, the group does find time to make some catchy hooks and the swing of Banished But Blameless and Land of the Sky is every bit as fun as it is devastating.
 And with all these factors considered, it can be seen that while the overriding theme of The Killing Jar is rooted in chaos, destruction and overall doom, it is a rock album for everyone. It can be a total thrill for punk fans and it can be a display of monolithic glory for stoner rock fans and if you just enjoy simple dusty rock and roll that has a violent swing with crunching melodies, you should enjoy it as well. And with that, Black Moth become a further reason as to why Leeds should probably be visited by all rock and roll enthusiasts sometime soon.

 Black Moth's The Killing Jar is out now via New Heavy Sounds.