Yautja – Songs of Descent (2014) / 96%

As powerful as Shea Weber's slapshot

This trio from Nashville is fucking insane. I've seen them live recently in Montréal when they toured with Magrudergrind and while I was familiar with this album beforehand, I really was flabbergasted with their stage presence. I've been spinning their debut full length since then and it's a marvelous tour de force full of turns and crossovers.

Their genre on the Archives doesn't come close to how vast their sound is but it's also difficult to pinpoint it effectively. Simply by looking at the three dudes, you could think that there's no cohesion to be found here but you'd be wrong. Their bassist was wearing an Aura Noir shirt and looked metal as fuck, their guitarist looked like he could play in Car Seat Headrest and their drummer would fit right at home at a Grateful Dead community worshiping acid. For some reason, the three dudes combined together simply works like a charm.

Sure, there's grind here but there's a lot of other stuff like mathcore, death metal, experimental and a big dose of sludge. It's almost like a southern appropriation of the US East Coast's hipsterism. In some ways, they're Tennessee's chaotic answer to Krallice or to early Mastodon, they have those odd rhythms while keeping the heaviness as an integral part of their identity. While there's an interesting variety of tempos, all of supreme quality, you never get lost with Yautja. They're taking you places that you wasn't quite sure were real. From the grind might of "Blinders" to the weird epic sludge of "Faith Resigned"(a song that sounds like Crowbar who suddenly became a forward thinking band), it's as a varied as you'll get for a grindcore band. They do feel like slowing things down quite often and it adds to the immense weight of the album, a song like "(Path to the Ground)" just messes around with a slow grind riff for ninety seconds but it doesn't affect the pace of Songs of Descent at all. The bass is thick and loud and the guitars are super interesting with the way it alternates between a super fast and crushing sound. Tyler Coburn has to be one of the best drummers I've ever seen live, the moustachioed gentleman is a beast on the kit. He's good at everything and also alternates between the blastbeats and a more traditional style. Supremely good musicianship.

Yautja is the name of the alien species in the Predator series and Nashville's NHL team is named... the Predators, not a coincidence! Like the invisible master hunter, the trio kills you with a combination of intelligence and pure aggression.

Yautja on Bandcamp