The Lumberjack Feedback
Mere Mortals

It is Mere Mortals when the band The Lumberjack Feedback makes the debut, an album featuring two guitarists, two drummers and one bassist. Apocalyptic is a word that I note in the press text and the cover looks a bit like that with the mere mortal praying towards a deity that will not do anything to prevent the demise of the mortal. It could be something along that lines, the sonic landscapes painted by this band could be interpreted like that or like something else depending to the state of your imagination.

Sludge or post-hardcore are descriptions I have seen for this album and I do agree with that. Slow, heavy, and instrumental, kind of like you imagine the sludgy music. They paint their scapes quite nuanced to give room for all the elements in the picture and that is something really positive, as is the strong drumming. The production is good and the music comes at you like a slow moving tsunami, there is no way to avoid it. But the album is also a tad on the long side with nearly fifty minutes of playing time; they could have done away without about five or six of those minutes without compromising the seven tracks that is being offered on Mere Mortals.

Good stuff, strong sound, strong album, the songs are good and besides the slightly long playing time there aren’t any major flaws. These guys give us a strong debut that should appeal to all those into the post-hardcore or sludge stuff, they tell us their stories without words and they are all interesting and good, the musical landscapes are interesting. Though, I don’t think the album stands out very much and that could be a bit detrimental, I think they hold back a little and don’t really let the music flow away as it could have done and that gives us an album that is a lot less exciting than it could have been. They need to let loose a bit more if they want to make something really exciting.

Fans of the sludge should check this album out, you will probably enjoy it quite a bit, but overall I think there is a chance that this album will drown amongst the massive amounts of music that is being released all the time. They need to dare and move more outside the boxes and allow their songs to blossom into their fullest potential if they want to be memorable and noted in this very saturated music world that we have today. They have the potential to make something really great so a few years from now I may have to write something really positive about these guys but this is not that time – now I only say that The Lumberjack Feedback has created a good debut album.

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