Sometimes when you hear an album for the first time, you’ll instantly know if you’ll like or dislike it, and sadly the debut full-length album from Rongeur, The Catastrophist & As The Blind Strive, falls into the latter category.
Stoner/sludge can be a fairly difficult genre to fully connect with at the best of times and there’s nothing about the piece that grips you right from the get-go. From there, the songs just tend to blend into one another rather than sounding like unique pieces, resulting in it sounding like one continuous track – and it makes for a fairly disappointing and un-engaging listen.
The Catastrophist & As The Blind Strive isn’t all bad, however. There’s a great crispness to the sound, which is a rarity in a genre such as this, and Rongeur sound so tight and together that there’s no faulting them in that respect – it’s just a shame that their potential winds up being wasted due to the lack of variety since all the songs follow the same sort of pattern.
As a whole, the album just isn’t that exciting – whilst there’s nothing about it that makes you recoil in horror, it’s not a release that draws you in and makes you want to hit the replay button.
4/10
