As I've said before, a well-placed For Fans Of list can be invaluable for a band's promotion. A lot f them also have us rolling our eyes, but when we receive an email that says "FFO: Mastodon, Converge, Tomb Mold, Portrayal Of Guilt, Trap Them [and] Gorguts" while describing themselves as "neo-crust sci-fi death sludge", you know I'm opening it, and it's even better when the band can back it up. And while the UK's Trudger aren't quite as expansive and technical as that description might suggest, it's also not at all inaccurate and they come pretty damn close—as you can hear for yourself from the exclusive album stream below.
Turns out Trudger have been around for a while—or rather they haven't. The band released their first and only album, Dormiveglia, all the way back in 2014. Since then they've been largely side-lined, with some of their members staying busy by serving short but significant stints in one of the best breakout underground metal bands of recent years (and Heavy Blog favourites) Dvne. Indeed, Trudger feature guitarists Jack Kavanagh (presumably not the long-dead Irish/Canadian/Australian communist pioneer or current Irish disability advocate), who played guitars on Etemen Ænka (2021), and Richard Matheson, who spent some time playing keyboards with them around the same period (and presumably isn't a resurrection of the influential sci-fi/horror author and screenwriter—although wouldn't it be cool if he was!). The quick sell is that these guys sound like a mix of Mastodon and Cult of Luna; the hard one is that Void Quest sounds a lot like what I and at least a few other Heavy Bloggers had hoped the last Dvne record had sounded more like.
Trudger are aptly named, not only because Void Quest took eleven years to arrive, but also because of the unrelenting, stomp that characterises its sound. The album was recorded by Pijn guitarist Joe Clayton, who's also recorded records by the likes of Leeched, Mastff and Dawnwalker, along with Trudger's previous record; and mastered by Brad Boatright, known for his work with Nails, integrity, Full of Hell, Obituary and pretty much every other band of that ilk, and it shows! This is a much more immediate offering than it's predecessor, clocking in at an efficient 35-minutes, with each of its spiraling compositions confined to a consistent and compact length. Whereas Dormiveglia was a postier, at times even droning affair, Void Quest s is a much more urgent and momentous release, whose essence and energy is perfectly captured in the Edmund Dulac painting of a knight being spurred into the "Valley of Shadow" by a "pilgrim shadow".
If I can put the largely pointless literature PhD I spent good chunk of my life obtaining to work for a second, I'd say that the band perhaps have more to do with fantasy than sci-fi, given the shout-out to the Dark Souls franchise in their promo copy and their Edgar Allan Poe-inspired cover art—though I also know plenty of scholars who'd argue that the album's theme of "documenting humanity's gradual self-imploding through a history of regressive and polluting behaviour" is inherently science-fictional. Their sound is also rather less crusty than their masterful marketing and mastering pedigree imply. Void Quest is a distinctly sludgy affair. If there's crust or core to be found, it's of the Conjurer variety, with most of its songs being built around wiry, Mastodon-esque guitar melodies, with "Battle hardened" bringing an almost Ulcerate-like dissonance to proceedings.
Trudger's song-title game is also on point, with each of the tracks (as well as the album itself) sporting a compact two-word title, honed for maximum impact and memorability. These songs feel great rolling off the tongue, even before they've entered your ears. Say some of them with me now: "Bile Elixir", "God Rest", "Battle Hardened", "Wind Cleaver", "Merciless Sabre", "Sleep Purge"—see, doesn't that feel good? And maybe that's what Void Quest is all about at the end of the day. This is feel-good feel bad music and it more than delivers, even if it takes its time to arrive. Thanks to this premiere though, you don't have to wait any longer to sink into its sludge sublimity.
Void Quest comes out this Friday, August 29. Pre-order it from their bandcamp page, once you're done rinsing the premier stream.