After recently loving the Sun Splitter cassette on Land of Decay, I had high hopes going into this split and they most certainly came through. Their half here stands up proudly with that tape, which is no easy feat, and the Bridesmaid side is no slouch either.
Bridesmaid, who I was notreally familiar with are definitely sailing similar waters to Sun Splitter, but still put their own unique spin on things."Vilkin' It For All It's Worth" is a fully instrumental piece that initially conjures up images of smoke and bong water, with its overdriven bass and garage band drums that are just the right amount of messy.It’s an unrelenting headbanging delight until the final 30 seconds or so, where it just goes full bore into grindcore assault, shattering the comfortable repetition that preceded it violently.
On the other side, "Plum Blossom" by Sun Splitter is cut from the same cloth as their tape.Opening with a robotic cymbal passage into their wonderfully diverse Sabbath riffs, the track is pure noisy bliss.While the song doesn’t quite transform into as many odd configurations as some of their other songs, it does carefully balance a repeated vocal mantra with big, caveman riffs and more complex guitar notes, dissolving into screams and noise in the middle segment.Subtlety is tossed out the window at the end, when the drum machine is programmed for "machine gun" and the guitar is pure death metal.
Paired together, they both highlight different aspects of the sludgy, post-doom metal scene.The contrast between Bridesmaid's ramshackle drums and Sun Splitter's digital precision is especially noticeable since both are matched with heavy, fuzzed out bass guitars, but neither is better than the other, they're just different: different, but equally badass.