Review
Two appetites share the same frame on this debut: the urge to flatten the listener and the pull toward something softer. Tremolo picking and jagged, snapping riffs keep the tempo near a sprint, and the blasts arrive so often they start to feel like weather. Then the record cracks open. A violin and viola line rises out of the din, a piano phrase drifts in once the storm has passed, and the drumming sometimes loosens into a jazz-tinged swing beneath the thrash.
The sequencing matters as much as the riffs. Across roughly forty minutes, the long, winding songs swallow the listener whole, and the closing stretch offers a more polished melodic movement that works like a deliberate exhale. The production leaves enough air for the quieter instruments to stay audible, which keeps the chaos from turning to mud.
The friction is also the record's soft spot. Some passages thrive on momentum, while others would gain from firmer dynamic shaping, and a few of the gentler moments arrive too late to change how the earlier music sits. Still, Lugubrious Garment is most persuasive when it lets the two impulses collide without forcing a resolution. The result feels less like a debut statement than a dare.
