It’s been a while since post rock has graced the dull, grey and gridded concrete streets that we live in, it seems for a while the genre seemed to fall out of favour somewhat, but as Keeper Of The Rifle claim, they don’t play for anyone but themselves. That said, they have been the cause of some talk and have seemed to impress at their first gig, even Hard Target showing a fair bit of appreciation. So, the kickstart from their debut Ep isn’t exactly a surprise, but it’s definitely worth a look.
Taking a rough dive into the recordings, you quickly get an idea of what the band are after in their music, large advancing chords and beats gather up a pace and raise the tension like the climb on a rollercoaster. After that, the drop comes afterwards with some choppy thrash and a balance of screamo and melodic vocals that quickly sum up the shifting tempo of the ride. “To Prove Our Worth” is a definite exercise of schizoid temperament.
In a similar stance “Hammer & Tongs” has the same feel, being the final part of the first three track’s “trilogy”, though the thrash takes a bit of a back seat with some metallic dives spicing up the slow paced experimental rock. Like the rest of the Cd, there doesn’t seem to be much of a standard layout for the sound and really goes for a winding route that always building itself up or breaking itself down.
Some of the Cd seems to be a bit “filler” though, if that term could apply to mainly instrumental metal, but “Two” does seem to take that angle a slow reverby tone that essentially merges the first two tracks together, but with that in mind, the weighty slab of the first three tracks combined is definitely a force to be reckoned with.
Proggy guitars take you into the last track, dubbed “Eyes Of Grace” and has a pretty old -school edge to it, deeply inclined with early metal as dual leads and a bombastic breakdowns shoulder their way through a shifting structure that makes it’s way to ending on a bit of gruff southern riffs and a gutsy moment of solo work. But with all the larger than life intros and a larger than life approach, the very end seems a little unfinished as it fades out, just that little nick that takes a tiny bit of the edge away from what is a heavy slab of rock.
With Keeper Of The Rifle, there’s two distinct styles at play, there’s the brooding, artistic post rock mentality infused with some aggressive metal ethic, both elements merging with some neat results but not exactly sitting neatly in either genre. In other words, something akin to the bastard child of Mastodon and Pelican along with Isis as some form of crazy uncle. It’s heavy, grimacing, has moments of beauty but as their first offering it’s impressive but with a few imperfections, though that might just be part of the charm itself…
Craig \m/
