Beastwars – The Ship// The Sea (Destroy Records) (13th Floor Album Review)
The Ship// The Sea is Beastwars sixth album, as with previous offering, the artwork is once again by Nick Keeler, (a mighty image it is too) and the music produced by James Goldsmith and Nathan Hickey, who have handled members’ creative egos since 2016.
Since 2009, Pōneke’s Beastwars have consistently (ignoring the band’s two year OE) delivered live, and since 2011, on vinyl, whence their debut self-titled album was birthed. With a lineup robustly stable until 2023 when Christian Pearce at first subbed in for original guitarist Clayton Anderson on 2023’s Tyranny Of Distance, then thence became a blood-brother, the band deservedly wear crowns (of thorns) as rangatira of doom in Aotearoa.
I approached The Ship// The Sea (w)holistically, purposefully ignoring the advance ‘singles’ I awaited the advance album, and like a good bottle of red, or a sublime Japanese whisky, I consumed Ship//Sea in a single setting. Driving, in fact it was while driving the back streets of west Tamaki Makuarau I mused and murmured to myself. Staying in theme, the album ripples in waves of metallic alluvium, chafed energy and just enough riff finesse to pause and push emotional responses.
We Say Fear, with its spoken-word intro, apprises the thematics within The Ship// The Sea. Provocation, affront and darkness are delivered in a cocoon of metal mastery, as the passage is undertaken. Guardian Of Fire, revels in a sludgier, sabbathier manner, Blood Will Flow is marked by an angular,catchy riff that fuels a groove, a replentive trait of (m)any Beastwars song. Whilst You Know They’re Burning The Land demands patience, as it crescendos towards its own riffs of regimen. Ultimately, on the album, Light Leads The Way, is truly the triumph on The Ship// The Sea, its slow, sensual sludge of riffs and beats creeping along, addictive in emotion and motion. Killer Track!
The Ship// The Sea is a masterpiece album, a collection of stoner/doom/sludge anthems, spawned by a band, four souls, enamoured with passion, displaying revelry in adversity and a thorny insight, that only rugged experience brings. If you want The Ship// The Sea on purple vinyl, be quick, only 100 pressed have been pressed.
Simon Coffey
The Ship// The Sea is out today on Destroy Records
