Dead C, The - Trouble (2016)

Vinyl LP

Trouble is The Dead C’s first full-length album since 2013’s Armed Courage, and while the band has only aged three years since then, the accumulated weight of decades is everywhere. That weight, though, is no hindrance. Instead, it’s wielded like an industrial machine on “One,” the first of the album’s five, number-titled tracks.

Halfway through its twenty-minute sprawl, the song splits open just wide enough to hear Michael Morley’s ghost-moaned vocals, a sound halfway between a mumble and a hymn.

Similarly long, “Four” is tauter—a strangulated barrage of wah-pedal feedback, washed in jazzy, impressionistic cymbal-work. As it picks up steam, it collapses spectacularly under its own mass.