Dead Man’s Root – Mouth Breather
Teratorn Records – 2007
By Axemaiden
I must confess at first that I was biased in favour of this band and album purely for the name
Dead Man’s Root, which still fills me with hilarity every time I read it, so I was really hoping that the album would live up to how I imagined it should. It took a while, I must admit; the music is fucking awesome, think along the lines of chugging and suspenseful sludge metal and doom blues with a hint of the slower variety of thrash. The grinding riffs are interspersed with some truly sweet chilled out sections, such as the gorgeous and contemplative slide guitar on
Scales on Crow and the banjo intro on
Steel Horse Blues, which make the band quite unusual and unique, but more work definitely needs to be done with the vocals. In some instances, such as the aforementioned
Steel Horse Blues, they work extremely well, complementing the music perfectly, but on other tracks, they sound out of tune and unnatural to the singers voice, which detracts from the other instruments. With a little more work this album would be fantastic.
Official Dead Man’s Root Myspace