2020 continues to be a bugbear for us all. Prog / metal outfit Milk White Throat from out Brighton way planned to unleash this package earlier in the year but, you know, pandemic and all. But now is the late summer / early autumn of our continent exit and how better to greet the changing of the seasons with some solid new music?
“Sleepless” is the eighth release from MWT and, man, while I write this to see what they’re about and where they’ve been, my ears are outright assaulted by the opening 10min track Home from their eponymous debut from 25 June 2011. Such raw emotion accompanies all manner of savagery and musicality and, as with all things prog (Tool, Koяn, Victim of Illusion, The Butterfly Effect, The Mars Volta, and the like), not all one thing comes in the one track. Wherever the hell these guys take it from here, in a good way, is anyone’s guess! I can say for certain that this is more Nordic than British!
Their next releases:
- Hope single (recorded as the seven-piece Lithurgy before Win Stanley left and the others carried on as MWT, and released in January 2012 under the new moniker);
- Permanent Exposure single, (March 2012);
- Nothing Isn’t (single-only mix released July 2014 as a precursor to the album);
- Death of Beauty album (October 2014);
- Under Duress single (July 2015- my stand-out);
- Nearly Alive (single released July 2018 for the EP); and
- House of Fire EP (August 2018);
offer seventeen tracks of genre-non-specific brutal musicianship. In that time the band went from six members (Will Gardner, Tom Humphrey, Brian Thomas, Guillaume Croizon, Gareth Harwood, and Tom Bates) to just three (Croizon, Thomas, and Bates).
“Sleepless” is proof that a band doesn’t need an entourage to maintain their edge. The guys are capable of brutality in multiple time-signatures with three as they were with six; and have adopted a quasi-Bono vocal style in some of the clean passages. It is being promoted with an official video, shot at Camden Town’s legendary The Underworld, that shows just how much the guys have been missing playing live. Utilising standard instrumental set-ups (six-string PRS, 4-string P-bass, and 5-6pc drum kit), there won’t be any sleeplessness with this straight-ahead rock piece!
There are only two more tracks on the “Heirarchy” EP, including the title track and the single. Closed Eyes opens quietly (I compare it to The Butterfly Effect and some of their Lithurgy work), launches briefly into brutality, but continues to weave between clean, emotional, and more — je ne sais quoi … their genre-non-specificity certainly carries on but in a brand new light that will certainly impress old and new fans alike. This punter especially! Heirarchy rounds out this stunningly amazing collection with more clarity and emotion and a maturity that has grown through and from the previous works. The single sits between the two.
Milk White Throat: Named from an old Nick Cave lyric but nothing like anything Nick and/or his Bad Seeds ever produced, although the Birthday Party may, may, have come somewhere in the neighbourhood of the same ballpark. Maybe! MWT will cause permanent ear damage, and I couldn’t think of a better way to go about achieving that. To do so, though, would mean missing out on listening over and over again!