REVIEW: AMERICAN HERITAGE 'SEDENTARY' (TRANSLATION LOSS)

At the risk of running up against consensus and feeding more bullshit juice into the great media bullshit machine, Chicago's beard-tugging American Heritage are absolutely fantastic. Forming at some vague point in the mid/late '90s, they're usually stacked alongside Knut and Keelhaul as one of those hoary old riff-manglers who deserve more respect than they get – despite splits with Mastodon, the Art of Burning Water and a whole batch of awesomesauce releases, they've largely slipped under the radar.

Five years on from their last full-length and 'Sedentary' can be neatly summed up by its credits which feature guest strings from Mastodon's Bill Kelliher, Minsk's Sanford Parker (who also produced), Intronaut's Leon del Muerte and Black Cobra's Rafa Martinez, keyboards from Sulaco's, recording with Torche's Jonathan Nuñez, and more than can be easily listed. This is groove-laden, hypnotic sludge rock with an undercurrent of progressive metal oddness and syrupy thick and syrupy sweet Kylesa melody. Destined to be compared effortlessly to a whole mess of other bands– this brand of strained, heaving bloke-rock being very much the soup of the day for much of Hydra Head and Relapse's roster – American Heritage have been doing it longer, and much better.