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Maegashira - The Stark Arctic
Music
Written by Kaustubh Thirumalai   
Sunday, 11 January 2009 15:03
The Stark Arctic is the debut album of four doomsters from New Jersey known as Maegashira. Curious about the band name, I decided to investigate a little. According to the internet smart alec Wiki, Maegashira is the lowest of five ranks in the top Makuuchi division of sumo wrestling. After that, I wanted to slide some corny analogies about how this album is crushing and ugly, not unlike two sumo dudes going at it, but fuck that. According to KvltSite, Maegashira are a bunch of irate rockers who can pummel your sorry ass! 

Let me tell you, after the routine top-to-bottom first listen, I wasn’t warming up to this one at all. Everything sounded rather tinny and the some of the high pitched vocals were all over the place. The guitar tones, clean and otherwise, (especially everything on the other side of the wah) sounded empty and on the whole, the sound seemed to be missing a critical element or two. But, let me tell you this as well, the music on offer was great. Only after two or three listens did I start to really sink my teeth into this and enjoy what I was biting off.

Maegashira’s brand of boorish sludge metal has an ominous cloud of hardcore tinged aggression hovering over it and will appeal to most of the Crowbar, Eyehategod fan base. They lay some caustic, crunchy, chug-oriented grooves on the table just as the aforementioned bands and mix things up by injecting a good dose of psychedelia with a southern scented flair. The vocalist does a variety of styles and most of them gel well with the surrounding music, but I thought that the high pitched screeches were pretty unnecessary (a very minor peeve).

By far, Ammonia For Sweat and Baggage Claim (which contains some fantastic drumming), together spanning 20 minutes, form the crux of the album and are the highlights of the album. Also, special mention needs to go to the lusciously evil groove that comes in seven and a half minutes into the album closer, Back To Muro.

Though The Stark Arctic is a good debut, with slightly more cohesive songwriting and tighter production, Maegashira will definitely move up the ranks in the world of sludge, if not sumo wrestling.
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Label - Spare Change Records
Year of Release - 2009

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Our valuable member Kaustubh Thirumalai has been with us since Friday, 11 May 2007.

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CrypticMyth
Re:Maegashira - The Stark Arctic
Jan 11 2009 20:22:55
Thanks.. and you can give it a shot even if you don't like Eyehategod too much cause there's a lot of these psyched out jams happening as well, resulting in much longer songs.
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