Sacred Mother Tongue can’t say we haven’t given them a shunt. Four years since the tippers started circling after their breakout Download performance, this second album adds substance to the froth and plants the Northampton four-piece decisively in the peloton of British metal.
Sacred Mother Tongue can certainly do the brutality, with drums cracking like femurs and guitarist Andy James thrilling with his doomy thrash stabs and flittering solos. Supposedly, the tracks on this album chart vocalist Darrin South’s journey from depression through to happiness, but you’d be pressed to detect much of a silver lining on the jaw-breaking finale The City Is Crying.
More important is that these are actual songs, as opposed to simply white noise, with cuts like Evolve/Become and Believe dishing up melodic choruses, and South ditching the screams of previous releases for a convincing Hetfield-style bark. So here’s another one for their clippings file. It’s a belter.
