Review Summary: Blind conviction.
I am fascinated by
Samudra Garba Pathe. It reeks. Samuel Goff and Grey Wulf roll in slop and oil, haphazardly pummeling the *** out of their instruments. This album is so gormlessly enthused with its pursuit of overambition that it becomes entertaining, even if only in thought. There's almost a complete lack of musicality and if four-on-the-flour beat making wasn't so heavily distilled into Western culture, I'd be hard pressed to think this album would sound like anything remotely close to emblematic of intelligent life if it were born out of a different context.
Samudra Garba Pathe is a noise rock interpretation of two toddlers with automatic firearms and terrible aim duking it out in a comically fatal game of nerf that could only end badly. The sheer weight of a rifle for such a naive body might make it more likely for someone to shoot their own foot rather than their adversary, however, and the two gents steering Among The Rocks and Roots come remarkably close to doing just that.
The release of the colossal single "Requiem" from their upcoming effort does make me wonder how much of
Samudra Garba Pathe's shortcomings are a result of production. It could be argued Among The Rocks and Roots are denizens of the avant-garde cabal but it is difficult to find anything finessed about their tribal cacophony. This album is essentially a competent drummer and an incompetent guitarist, tied by mutual love for long-form skull-bashing, having at it for an hour and ten minutes with the only rules being ‘distortion is your friend’ and ‘that first riff was sick, play it again’. When two songs exceed 15 minutes and one sails past a 30 minute mark, I can only wonder if these forcefully raw slabs of gunk were as taxing to record as they were to consume. It is all so wonderfully vivid: the sweaty, calloused fingers painting the fretboard shiny as the skinsman slowly adjusts his posture over time to match the intensity of whatever primitive pulse his partner in crime decides should crop up next. What guitar playing there is seldom (if ever) leaves the safety of the first five frets of the first two strings. From time to time, a slightly more human element in the form of neanderthalic shouting crops up just to shake things up but it is too little too late in most occasions and almost feels like a jack-in-the-box at a funeral.
Damning as that might be, it is still fascinating. This record is childishly evil in tone, and childishly evil in length, and childishly evil in almost every other aspect. It isn’t good. Hell, it isn’t even average. But the conviction by which Goff and Wulf chomp down on their own self-aggrandizement is both barbaric and humourous to witness. Floating in a void of artistic embellishment surrounded by nothing but a scrappy rhythm tone wade two men fixated on the dream. Every breath they take, every move they make, it all serves to thrust them into some euphoric state of rigid, cantankerous spirituality that frowns on all who dare oppose their dutiful compositions. Drained of levity,
Samudra Garba Pathe becomes amusing. Overwrought with its own existence, it stumbles, falls, and remains oblivious to the stupidity of its conception.
