Logh – North – Review

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North (Bad Taste)
by Tim Den

Swedish chameleons Logh have pretty much made a career out of left turns. Their debut, Every Time a Bell Rings an Angel Gets His Wings, was emo enough to be licensed by Deep Elm. Its follow-up, The Raging Sun, stripped away youthful angst in exchange for a sulking, year-long-winter melancholy that only Scandinavian bands can harness. Gone were the pumping power chords, replaced by misty fogs and ghostly pianos. Third album, A Sunset Panorama, was recorded live in one day and featured a post-apocalyptic drone dense enough to be licensed by Hydra Head. Is your head spinning yet? If not, get this: New album, North, is pretty much the antithesis of A Sunset Panorama. Written and painfully recorded over 10 months, it resembles countrymen The Perishers more than it does Jesu. There are epic piano numbers, reflective acoustic ballads, or soaring heartfelt anthems. Basically, it’s Logh’s most accessible, melodic, and straightforward release yet. But “straightforward” for these guys still means lots of layering of percussion and samples on top of the triple guitar and a plethora of keyboards, though never will you be able to point and say, “Wow, they’ve gone overboard on this section.” All the details have been meticulously placed and arranged so that you actually hear more of silences than instruments most of the time. Incredible, huh? I can only imagine what their next record is going to sound like.
(www.badtasterecords.se)