Earth Tongue – Dungeon Vision (Red Records) (13th Floor Album Review)
Poneke Born, Berlin based, duo-band Earth Tongue, aka Gussie Larkin (Guitar & Vocals) and Ezra Simons (Drums & Vocals), third Album – Dungeon Vision, strays a little more from their originator Black Sabbath infested reverberation.
Like on their 2024 album Great Haunting, Earth Tongue continue to revisit the spirit of classic UK metal, tinged with psychedelia and a modicum of gothic ash.
Produced by Ty Segal in Los Angeles, an artist they’ve toured with, the result is a tight and complex compendium of songs. But it’s not all traditional smoke and daggers, on Body of Water, Earth Tongue creates a mesmerizing ballad, richly tuneful and beat led, though they can’t help but have a moment or two of fuzz.
It’s this rite of passage, perhaps edged on by Segal’s mentorship, that sees Earth Tongue stretching and consuming to create hypnotically rich songs like Orbit of a Witch, with its melee of parts that threaten to disassemble, but fortuitously never do. In tandem instrumental track Symmetry Dripper, delves into an almost (Gary) Numanisch aural world.
But fear not purists, cometh Living Hell, the influences of the Birmingham Four is much apparent, it’s the riff… it’s always the riff!
Simon Coffey
Dungeon Vision is out now
