Illuminating moments: sitting together with friends talking about particular bands and the style they play. While discussing, it won’t take long and you will get lost in a game of helpless genre dropping, trying to describe something you don’t find a box for. Gladly it became harder to label bands. Which to me feels like a relief from a narrow, gridlocked cultural process. Take the amusement you get today by reading concert flyer, and what is written to describe the bands. It can be loveless and blunt. For a more conservative mind, maybe ideal because you know what to expect, and the show might be as predictable as the flyer already told you. But sometimes people realize the cage they obviously build, especially for newer bands. And how tough it might be to play your ass out of those cages. Because the flyer is neither close to the band’s self-conception nor to what is happing on stage. So I prefer non-committal descriptions. Giving me the opportunity to put them into my own box. And go to the show or listen to the record in the first place. So here we are with EARTHEN TONGUE and their first release: “Deviant Burial“. A good example for that matter. I guess you will be served with nouns like Death Metal, Doom Metal, Sludge Metal. But for me its in-between all that. It has the arrogance of Black Metal, the stench of Punk, the crushing weight of Sludge and the willingness to compromise of Death Metal. All packed in an atmosphere of a mushroom trip on a starry night in a quarry. An oily cocktail of filth, gloom and gravely mud. Disgorged at a place were death seems to come as a release. So and now you know what to expect! Or simply put: three songs between six and eleven minutes. Three times a journey from slowest cymbal crushing to fast snare slugging and back. Heavy blues scale riffing and dissonant double-picking, delivered by a voice which seems to harbour some kind of bitter poison. Maybe you have had those cocktails already quite often, but EARTHEN TONGUE know how to receive your order again. Just by not being easily predictable and not providing those well known insipid flavours. Instead having the right amount of freshness and doom bringing electrolytes in their sinister mixture to enjoy “Deviant Burial” quite often and maybe get wasted on it. Cheers, as long as you can! More information at: www.facebook.com/earthentongue, http://earthentongue666.bandcamp.com/releases