Album review: Tuskar – Matriarch

Tuskar have been shifting with the strange, tectonic heft of some unknowable Eldritch Abomination beneath the surface of the British metal underground for a few years now. Where 2017’s unhinged debut EP Arianhood and 2018’s audacious three-track follow-up The Tide, Beneath, The Wall felt like the sounds of an elemental force establishing its artistic foothold, though, the seven songs of Matriarch see them find their final form.

Creeping into view across the funereal 12-minute sprawl of the title-track, the self-anointed “nuclear sludge” of their beginnings is still there, channelling a leaden, fuzzed-up brand of doom indebted to heroes like Sleep and contemporaries such as Conan and Slabdragger. As the album opens up with the concussive, rapid-fire weirdness of To The Sky, jazzy ambient-instrumental The Trees, The Trees, The Trees, and aptly-titled metronomic masterclass Halcyon Gilt, however, the appreciation for of bands like Mastodon, Baroness and Gojira becomes more tangible. As does the ability to meet those outfits’ superstar standards.

Remarkably, this high-end racket is wrangled by a stripped-to-the-pointy-bone two-piece arrangement of drummer/vocalist Tyler Hodges and guitarist Tom Dimmock. Tuskar was clearly born from their shared love for heavyweight prog, noise-rock and post-metal but, more importantly, it’s powered by an interpersonal chemistry that sees those influences re-forged with polished originality and propelled with juggernaut intensity ravenous hunger.

Into The Sea churns with tempestuous blood and thunder before slowing to the creaking pace of a ship sinking beneath the waves. Shame is a devastating seven-minute confessional that slams in from left-field, undulating between passages of odd, slump-shouldered melody and blasts of caustic self-loathing. Then soul-shuddering closer Grave bids farewell with a descent into the abyss, from juddering panic to purgatorial breathlessness to a brilliant, infernal outro that burns with both finality and promise.

There’s not an ounce of the compromise that normally comes with cult heroes’ emergence into the mainstream metal consciousness about Matriarch, but expect Tuskar to get there anyway. Because these songs need to be heard.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: YOB, Mastodon, Baroness

Matriarch is released on February 25 via Church Road