Album Review: The Sea Shall Not Have Them - Mouth

13 November 2012 | 2:46 pm | Brendan Telford

Mouth is yet another example of how instrumental rock can capture the mind and soul.

Gold Coast-based duo The Sea Shall Not Have Them have crafted a deceptive album in debut LP, Mouth, in that it mines many of the familiar tropes of instrumental rock yet imbues them with just enough originality to steer them into uncharted waters. Subtly melding electronica and layered piano and bass lines to their onerous drums-and-guitar blueprint, TSSNHT manage to create a veritable menagerie of sounds that evoke untapped levels of depth and resonant interplay.

The relaxed, undulating waves of Signal echo out across the dark night sky, an emotive opener that eases the listener into Mouth's world, before the understated urgency inherent in the title track takes us on a slightly more familiar trajectory, slowly building on the tension while amping up the guitars. The subtlety is that the quiet/loud dynamic so often abused by likeminded contemporaries is narrowly avoided here, instead remaining on a crunching riff and cascading cymbals with barely perceptible shifts in momentum, the bass-and-glockenspiel outro the only signpost to the post-rock genre. Traces develops into an undulating wave that mesmerises; Syrup Floor is an instant crash of noise, echoing away like early Mogwai, embracing the intricacies and the silences as much as the brutal assaults on the senses. The Ruins is yet another variation, radiating a wave of sound like a subliminal heartbeat, and the plaintive chiming guitar over the top of the wash of distortion on Departure is another nice touch.

There are moments like closer, Stormsong, where such variations aren't enough for the sound to soar like Icarus towards stereotypical terrain, but Mouth is yet another example of how instrumental rock can capture the mind and soul.