Uniform - The Long Walk (Album Review)
Uniform — The Long Walk
Released: OUT NOW via Sacred Bones Records.
Uniform Line up:
Ben Greenberg | Guitar & Electronics
Michael Berdan | Vocalist
Greg Fox |Drums
Uniform online:
Let me introduce to you some of the most filthy music I’ve ever encountered. If you ever thought the Woolworth’s at Town Hall was bad, or the alley outside the Croft Institute was bad, or even Brisbane as a whole was bad… You’re yet to come into contact Uniform’s The Long Walk. It’s positively and unreservedly, disgusting.
In the absolute best of ways.
The Long Walk, a not so subtle nod to the depressingly good story by Stephen King, shares the general themes of indoctrinated insanity and normalised violence. This album wants to maim you… Unforgivably. Claustrophobic tsunamis of static and noise wash over the drumming of Greg Fox (which sounds exemplary by the way) and make the vocals of Michael Berdan feel like he’s simultaneously drowning whilst trying to scream away his agonising demons.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTa1CiFtQlc&w=640&h=360]
The album begins with ‘The Walk,’ a dancefloor banger if Uniform has ever made such a thing. Unsettling ambience gives way to the most dirty guitar tone Ben Greenberg, and indeed the entire genres of industrial and sludge have ever produced. Reeking of putrid punk anger, it oscillates between danceable pent up rage and a pathetic, throat tearing strain. It’s a work of art.
The dirty, dirty tone doesn’t go away throughout the album, if anything, it only intensifies. ‘Inhumane Condition’ and ‘Found’ employ noise as a weapon; the droning static underlying the sonic violence relentlessly pounds into your ears like a jackhammer splitting a watermelon. Fox’s pummelling on the skins is astounding in these moments, as they seem to be the only thing not mixed with a putrid amount of mud, but the same amount of furious force.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3AU-BGCBpE&w=640&h=360]
The sludgier, darker energy Berdan brings is let loose on the back end of the album; his insurmountable resentment is thrown at the listener with the force of a typhoon, shredding skin into tatters as it lumbers past. Contrasts and confusion are what the lyrics deal in, and it’s almost impossible to not be affected by not only the words (if you can catch them), but the sheer emotion that propels every syllable deep into the soft flesh of your brain.
The Long Walk deals with anger and insanity in the most novel of ways; not just saying it, but making you feel it in every fibre of your being. Listening to Uniform will make you want to have a long shower to get clean, but you’ll only end up rocking back and forth clutching your knees as the boiling water rains perpetually from above.
Standout tracks: The Walk & Peaceable Kingdom
The Long Walk track listing:
- The Walk
- Inhuman Condition
- Found
- Transubstantiation
- Alone in the Dark
- Headless Eyes
- Anointing the Sick
- Peaceable Kingdom
Rating: 5/5
The Long Walk is OUT NOW via Sacred Bones Records.
Reviewed By— Dylonov Tomasivich
