Third time’s always the charm

To the rest of the country, the East coast has always been a strongly touted pinnacle of hardcore sounds and a tough attitude that transcends the music it influences. For the New Jersey band Clamflight, that sonic exterior comes out in a pretty sludge-metal manner. Their first two releases, Volume I and I Versus the Glacier, were forays into an insatiable murky sludge, but their newest effort III shows them steering down a path of sweeping, riff-driven post-metal that could very well be some of their best work yet.

Such a large statement may seem premature granted that III is literally only their third release and is usually reserved for bodies bigger. But the five-track album has the robustness of those three times its length. The opening and closing tracks, “Whale Road” and “History of the Earls of Orkney” respectively, clock in at well over 10 minutes of beautifully intense power. “Whale Road” gives clamorous drums and harmoniously recurring chords the first quarter of the song, before ’70s rock grooves and solos give creative variation for the rest of the song. The heat established with the intro track carries on into what succeeds it, though it intensifies.

“Selkie” and “Echoes in Stone” make a good pair. Zealous in its execution, “Selkie” is a relentless barrage of heavy breakdowns, where “Echoes in Stone” trades beatdowns for choruses. “Eynhallow” follows this twain, but in a somewhat lackluster fashion.

Though there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with the instrumental track, “Eynhallow,” it just seems slightly misplaced in Clamfight’s sea of lengthy resonance. At just about five minutes, the track is somehow just a little too long for what it is and could’ve served a better purpose as a shorter interlude to the madness. “History of the Earls of Orkney” quickly harshens the vibe again, finding its perfect place between Leviathan-era Mastodon and the Clamfight’s own established finesse. It’s a powerful way to end an album and in ways anchors the album, culminating its finest moments into an ardent package.

Clamfight have taken the slow-burning, mercurial metal influence of prolific bands before and utilized it much to their advantage. The album is overpowering in a pleasant way and shows that Clamfight can make it as much more than a band from Jersey.