Album Review: Into The Storm – Where The Merfalo Roam

Seattle noise makers Into The Storm have released their sophomore album, Where The Merfalo Roam, via Alive and Breathing Records. The band have sated that this is the closest representation to their live sound and if you wanted a metaphor to let you know what you’re in store for on Where The Merfalo Roam, the band have described the album cover as depicting “the mouth of a giant mythical creature that devours chunks of societies with bits of them still stuck against it’s teeth and the creatures that are still feasting upon them.”

Where The Merfalo Roam opens with Truck Van Trailer, it tries to lull you into a false sense of security before the band live up to their name and throw you Into The Storm, this is dark, stormy and discordant number. The album stays in this theme throughout it’s ten tracks,  but they vary between downbeat tracks, such as Seduced and Disappointed and Maths, up to full on aural assaults, such as Ghostmaker and Fell Off A Horse, and there’s pretty much everything in between before you hit the albums grand finale. Where The Merfalo Roam culminates in the title track that is an epic journey across whichever dark and disturbing universe Into The Storm inhabit.

Where The Merfalo Roam contains elements of sludgey stoner rock, metal and hardcore, which I suspect is all combined in a suspicious fog. For me an album that is as remorselessly heavy as this needs something to break it up, which is an element this album lacks, it is a relentless discordant cacophony. What you get on Where The Merfalo Roam is just over forty minutes of doom laden stoner sludge, whilst there is variation in the tempo of the delivery, the entire album is a remorseless and incredibly heavy onslaught that becomes a bit wearing after a while, but if you’re tastes are towards the heavier and darker end of hardcore then you should acquaint yourself with Into The Storm.

Where The Merfalo Roam can be streamed and downloaded here