<p><span><span>- Much like the salty ocean they so clearly adore, Pacific Northwest band Helms Alee (a name which is a sailor’s turn-of-phrase meaning ‘come about’), well they can be a fickle mistress. They’ve settled on the label sludge metal for what they do, though they don’t sound like <strong>Eyehategod</strong>, <strong>Neurosis</strong> or recent touring partners <strong>Melvins</strong>. I suppose any sludge band is a little hard to pin down, messing around with elements of metal, hardcore, stoner, grunge, indie and all things post-those-genres. Five albums in its clear that Helms Alee like to fiddle with the formula as much as anyone. Their experiments have yielded mixed returns, over the years, but to put it in terms they’d approve: it can be a rich bounty, when their boat comes in.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Latest full-length, <em>Noctiluca</em>, continues the band’s love-affair with nautically-themed titles. This one’s a five-dollar word for bioluminescence, the sort you might see lighting up dark waters by night. If that makes you think of something softer and full of wonder, I think that may well be how the band are thinking too. The guttural roar of the guitars is not as intense as you would have heard on some other Helms Alee records and certainly less crushing than most other sludge metal bands.The sharp brutality of hardcore takes a back seat, allowing Helm Alee to focus on the harmonic qualities of their sound and these are perhaps their greatest strength. The trio of <strong>Dana James</strong>, <strong>Hozoji Margullis</strong> and <strong>Ben Verellen</strong> really know close vocal harmony. I’m sure most people will want to disagree with me, but when I was listening to recent single <em>Spider Jar</em>, I caught myself more than once thinking that it could be an <strong>Eagles</strong>’ song. </span></span></p>
<p><span><span>The lyrics fit the mystical, ocean-deep mood. The band opt for the same poetic, abstract fare they usually do. Take for instance: “<em>Angles force what we make up as fate / When open hands serve to hide your face / We're marked for left in the dust and breeze / Dirt swallows dreams but you know worse things happen at sea</em>” I’m not sure any one moment really hit me more than another: the words serve almost like a quasi-religious chant, sown into the long tracts of harmony, the percussive, ritualistic performance of them may actually be more important than what they mean.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>It may sound like I’m a describing a band that’ve grown up, forgotten what it means to make heavy music in the a long, slow decline into MOR dreck. Far from it: listening to a cut like <em>Beat Up</em> I fully expect Ben Verellen to burst a blood vessel as he shrieks <em>Dig In / Shore Up / Strands</em>, bellowed out at a high-high-D. I don’t know what it means, but by Saturn’s beard he means it and so does this band.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Enormous volume, ear-splitting harmonies and a grinding pace that will convince you none of this will ever end: Helms Alee don’t deliver what other sludge-metallers do, which may explain why they remain a niche pleasure up there in the cold corner of the US. The way it sounds right now if more people don’t want to listen to this I don’t know why. It’s exactly what I want to hear.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>- Chris Cobcroft.</span></span></p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=4006126742/size=large/bgcol=f…; seamless><a href="http://helmsalee.bandcamp.com/album/noctiluca">Noctiluca by Helms Alee</a></iframe>
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