CASTROVAVLA - WE ARE A UNIT (BREW RECORDS)

THIS WAS WRITTEN FOR SUBBA-CULTCHA, AND CAN BE FOUND >>HERE<<

Debut full-length release We Are A Unit sees Leeds duo Castrovalva evolve into a trio with the addition of vocalist Leemun Smith. The album was recorded and mastered by Ross Halden at Ghost Town Studios (Forward Russia!, Sky Larkin, Rolo Tomassi).
To think that this almighty racket is made by a three-piece is hard to get your head around. In fact, the whole album is hard to get your head around. But once you do, it turns into a mind blowing sonic buffet, where you are allowed to stick your hands all over the musical platters of three turbo-charged Northern boys, and dabble in slices of metal, electro, rap, jazz, punk, and hardcore, which surprisingly amount to one delectable feast.
Enjoy the contextually slow pace of ‘We Are A Unit (Intro)’; because once that warns you of the forthcoming aural otherworldliness and tests your taste for heavy riffage, it all kicks off. ‘Pump Pump’, whilst perhaps being the most accessible track on the album, is still fucking mental. Opening with bass that’s scuzzier and fuzzier and faster and nastier than DFA1979, back-dropped to violent screams that could be from some kind of doom metal band, at the same time as being invigorated and excited, I am actually quite scared. But with lines like “Go, grab that fucking gun”, I can’t be alone. Despite my fear, and perhaps because of it, listening to Castrovalva is extremely entertaining. In a society where generic regurgitations are championed and worshipped, it is so refreshing to hear something original and completely oblivious to ‘cool’, ‘now’, or ‘london’.
The pace of this record is like the speed of light. ‘Thuglife’ features the most urgent translation of lyrical melody I have ever heard, with the vocalist quickly tripping from Mars Volta wails, to Hadouken! grime, to Chow Chow lo-fi vocoder-isms, to classic rock “WOOS” and “YEAHs”, and then onto screams that only their Leeds counterparts Pulled Apart By Horses could compete with. ‘Thuglife’ would probably be my favourite song on the album if it weren’t for the prominence of the slightly cheesy line “My ghetto love song”. But that’s a minor and completely personal issue, mainly with the word ‘ghetto’.
So now I can move onto ‘We Don’t Go To Ravenholm’, which is an absolute beast, and definitely now the standout track. The repetition in the instrumentation comes as a welcome breather, and allows appreciation for those aforementioned riffs. At one instance the bass guitar work echoes the likes of Melvins, Kyuss, and definitely the toxic grunt of Lightning Bolt, but the willingness to step back and allow the melody to shine is incredibly effective, and probably essential in the chaotic band dynamics. This happens in ‘Outlaws’, where the drop out ensures that they have our full attention, ready to smack us back out of the park with the catastrophic intro to ‘Bison Scissor Kick’.

We Are A Unit will hit your stereos like a bomb; I just can’t wait to see this band live.