Mare
Self-titled EP

It seems that after Neurosis, Isis, Pelican and all the necessary talk about subsequent bands, it’s difficult to find someone capable of updating a sound and what is now a true label, according to some already lacking originality and personality.

Yet these Mare, hailing from Toronto, guitar/vocals, bass, and drums, in 2004 create a new face for the word Sludge with their self-titled EP.
Although less focused on complex melodies and harmonies or more intricate ones (think Pelican, to understand), the sonic experimentation of this trio moves towards more oneiric, dreamy, but also grotesque (especially grotesque), hallucinogenic, bizarre moments, yet still sludge. Yes, yet still sludge.

There’s no timbral richness like the ‘Kayo Dot’ nor the crazy eclecticism of ‘Maudlin of the Well’, but the spirit, the attitude, the way of thinking is the same, until the boundaries of the genre itself are broken down; in place of missing melodies and crescendos/diminuendos, they prefer the contrast of harmony/dissonance, silence/sound, clean/screamed voice (a raw scream, quite similar to those shrieks of Kayo Dot). There are also more unusual moments, like the duo Palaces/Sun For Miles where the most schizophrenic sludge is paired with an “a cappella” section. But just as an example.

This EP holds great promise, because it shows a band already capable of consciously manipulating music that is unconscious, striking directly at the human subconscious. Awaiting an album.