After a promising debut of caustic tech grind metal, Tennessee’s Nights Like These, much like similar sounding act Harlots, Khann and Yakuza, have injected a sense of droning, sludgy experimentation into their lumbering dissonance and while a decent effort, it’s not quite as good as the recent Harlots release.

What you get is an album that has more in common with Black Cobra than anything else but what hurts the promising mix of discordant slightly Southern licked noise and muddy sludge is that the mix is never quite fully organic and fluid. Then thrown in a couple of truly moments of horrid clean vocals (“Black The Sun”), that ruin song and you end up forgetting the fact there is some MASSIVE Moments on this album, and that’s a shame.

Heavier, filthier tracks like “Samsara”, “Empty Lungs”, “Veteran Thieves” and “King” outshine the bands attempts at more introspective moments (“Collective Unconscious”, the awkward “Claw Your Way Out”, the loping “Electric Winds”) as the band isn’t quite ‘on the same levels as say The Ocean, Cult of Luna or Rosetta (a direction I see the band fully encompassing) when it comes to that sort of depth and delivery. Either way, none of it, even the girthier moments really impacted me and left the album as one I really want to listen to on a regular basis.

Still, Nights Like These are one of Victory’s better bands and I still think they are capable of delivering something amazing once they settle on their style. The thing is, sludge/drone/post rock is the new black in metal so they had better do something special on the next outing to stand out from the pack.

[Visit the band's website]

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