Album Review: Tarmak's Debut EP 'Plow'
At long last, the music section of this electron-dust cluttered website is experiencing a revival. After a few months of wondering if I should bother writing about music, a friendly band from Ghent, Belgium, gave me a nudge to try it again.
On May 21, 2020, the progressive metal band Tarmak will release its four-song EP “Plow” to 15.1 billion pairs of global ears. It’s available on the band’s Bandcamp page, as well as Tarmak’s website. You can also stream it on nearly any music platform including Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Pandora and Tidal.
If you don’t want to read any further, do the following: Buy the album, give it a listen, and then raise a glass of the finest Trappist beer you can find in the band’s honor.
Progressive is a buzz word that’s tossed onto a metal band’s description without much thought. However, Tarmak has earned the right to carry the progressive and proto-prog torch for as long as possible.
The four-song EP is like slowly sipping a fine bourbon over a few hours. And with the right set of ears, you can pick out where the band is blending the acidy sounds of King Crimson, the desert drone of King Buffalo, and the latest 70’s progressive nod from Opeth.
The album opens with “Krater,” a fat, fuzzy track driven by Simon’s shifting drum beats and Sander’s crunching guitar. It’s the album’s only song with vocals that don’t kick in until about the 2-minute mark.
Tarmak begins to take us on a journey with this track, but it slows to a bass/drum breakdown. The band kicks in with Geert’s galloping bass and a guitar riff that’s placed delicately over the rhythm section.
In a short email exchange with the band, Sander noted that his musical influences like Tool, Pelican and Russian Circles, “manage to completely take over my mind and take it on a long journey, far away, to a lot of different places.”
“Krater” is that song that will send the listener in four or five different directions, and then end up in an unexpected place when the song closes.
Just when I thought I figured out what the rest of “Plow” had in store, “Petanque” kicked into my headphones. The opening bars sounded like a 90s riff from Helmet but shifted quickly back to a completely different environment just before the one-minute mark.
Geert leads the song with a bassline that sounds like it jellied helium and an underground funk track. Sander steps back and lets Geert and drummer Simon lead the song, which is a prominent sound throughout the EP.
“As a three-piece, you’ve got to balance the different instruments to create a full sound,” said Geert. “You can, of course, create walls of guitars on (a) record, but that can’t be translated to the stage. So, drum and bass become important instruments to color in the musical landscapes we create. This allows the guitars the freedom to be crushingly heavy one moment and sparsely melodic at another without the music suddenly falling flat.”
The album’s third track, “Krampus,” opens with a drum and bass beat that has the eerie feel of the real cloven-hoofed, evil Christmas figure running over the rooftops of a snowy European city.
“Growing up, I listened a lot to the stuff I raided from my dad’s CD collection,” said Geert. “Lots of blues icons such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton as well as fusion players like Larry Carlton and Lee Ritenour. Then I got heavily into 80s hard rock and metal. Van Halen was my biggest inspiration to pick up an instrument. I just loved their raw attitude.”
My ears hear all of Geert’s influences during the opening bassline in “Krampus.” It’s driving, slightly distorted, and I can see a crowd in a club really grooving to it.
I was settling in nicely with the Geert’s bass and Simon’s eight-arm drum beat, but the song quickly shifted into a different space with Sander crunching riffs up and down the fretboard.
The song is controlled chaos, much like a home would be if Krampus did show up to terrorize your children. About midway through, the band slows, and we’re taken into a different part of the universe.
Simon’s drums keep the song within its boundaries, leading the listener into a multitude of sections.
“I like a bit of black metal and a bit of sludge, but just as well jazz and afro-beat,” said Simon “Danny Carey is a major source of inspiration. He can play the craziest shit because he’s got a perfect jazz-based combination of complexity and fluency, and transforms it into his personal style.”
The final track, “Toton,” was Sander’s time to shine. My immediate note was Sander’s hollow/throaty guitar effect.
“I have two distortion pedals which have a completely different sound, and are meant to be used for totally different parts of a song,” said Sander. “One is more subtle and refined while the other intends to melt your face off in any way it possibly can. Activating both of them at the same time usually sounds a bit over the top and is definitely not so healthy for, or rather abuses, my amplifier. But for this part of the song in ‘Toton’ it turned out to play in our favour!”
Tarmak combines elements of music that don’t normally pair well together in “Toton,” like a funky bass line with a droning guitar. And if that wasn’t enough for you, then keep your ears open for Simon playing watering can near the end of the track.
“We wanted the riffs at the end of the song to sound as big as we could, but didn’t want to cheat, in the sense of duplicating the guitars 15 times,” said Sander. “So, we let our creative juices flow, had a look around in the studio of Genuine Sound, and among some exotic instruments, we also noticed a watering can.
“Simon has a personal history of didgeridoo-playing, so we decided to let him ‘play’ the watering can, didgeridoo-style, record whatever sounds came out of it and ultimately put it on top of the guitar layers. We were all very pleased with the results he delivered. In this moment, we definitely came one step closer in our never-ending quest of tracing the brown note.”
Like any good band, Sander captured the moment on his phone, which you can see here.
The general public chews through most music like a cheap pack of Bubble Yum. The song has to be verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus– all in 4/4 time and lasting a little over three minutes.
There’s nothing wrong with that mentality; there’s little risk involved, and almost no adventure.
Tarmak is here to challenge you as a listener, drawing on a variety of styles and sounds to bring you a fantastic four-track EP that can be haunting and groovy all within the same song.
Adventuresome listeners will enjoy “Plow” and what Tarmak has in store for the world in the coming months.
Like the rest of us, Tarmak’s gig schedule is a bit unclear at the moment. Be sure to keep up with all of Tarmak’s news and happenings by liking their Facebook page.
“We are aching to go back out on stage, so once we are allowed back into the world, we will start planning new gigs,” said Sander. “We won’t go out on tour as such - we all have day jobs - but a healthy schedule of gigs is was we’re aiming for.”
The trio is certainly worth seeing live, and hopefully, they end up in Idaho soon.