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Album review: Matador – Above, Below And So
Canadian psych-doom trio Matador bring the cosmic thunder on their most expansive and complete offering to date.
- Words:
- Jack Butler-Terry
When Matador announced themselves into the doom scene back in 2019 with their instrumental debut album They Were Here Before Us, they showed plenty of promise without much fuss. Flourishes were minimal, but the bedrock of their craft was concrete. Their 2021 follow-up The Surge built further on those foundations and revealed the trio to be ones to watch. Now, five years on, Above, Below And So solidifies their place in the new doom vanguard.
Lead single The House Always Wins gave fans a taste of what this renewed and reinvigorated iteration of Matador would sound like, and opens the record here in grand, cinematic style. Guitarist James Kirk’s vocals sound as if they’ve been a part of the band’s DNA since day one and gives their brand of psych-doom an enthralling new edge. The vocalisations at the bridge feel like the entrance to a cosmic wormhole, before a wailing solo launches the track into hyperspace.
The monolithic The Flood hears the band return to their instrumental roots, as towering, lumbering riffs crash like waves, before the droning interlude-of-sorts O Suna adds a menacing edge that sets the back half of Above, Below And So up for aural devastation.
True enough, A Virus makes its case to be one of Matador’s most brilliant tracks to date. James’ delivery of ‘Fireworks in my mind, a death that’s so unkind I’ll bleed you a river’ is all viscera and loathing, yelled from the seventh circle of hell. And therein lies Above, Below And So’s gilded, serrated edge.
Matador’s evolution is one of the clearest and most rewarding in the genre, and their trajectory album on album is staggeringly steep. True students of the craft, they’ve taken inspiration from some of psych and doom’s strongest players and made something that doesn’t just copy from those playbooks. Matador is its own snarling, looming beast, and it’s ready to bludgeon you into the next dimension.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Ufomammut, Elder, Pallbearer
Above, Below And So is released on February 27 via Church Road Records
