Gone Is Gone - Echolocation album review

When two Troys go to war...

Gone Is Gone Echolocation album cover

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With a line-up featuring Mastodon vocalist/bassist Troy Sanders, Queens Of The Stone Age guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen and At The Drive-In drummer Tony Hajjar, you’d expect this supergroup to be heavy, heavy alt.metal heaven, and you’d be right. Despite easing us in with a deceptively gentle, doom-laden intro on Violescent, it’s not long before they come in with an elephantine desert-rock riff that could tear Arizona a whole new Grand Canyon.

Stripped of the sonic chaos of Mastodon and ATD-I, the rhythm section are free to just let go and pummel, proving a perfect foil for Sanders’ caveman roar. Meanwhile, the frequent quieter, more considered moments, such as the creeping, ghostly Dublin, have an underlying sense of spaced-out dread.

This is as oppressive as any brute force they could mete out – their cover of Portishead’s sublime Roads, with its portentous industrial heartbeat, is both beautiful and terrifying. This is one supergroup we can get behind.

Emma Johnston

Emma has been writing about music for 25 years, and is a regular contributor to Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Prog and Louder. During that time her words have also appeared in publications including Kerrang!, Melody Maker, Select, The Blues Magazine and many more. She is also a professional pedant and grammar nerd and has worked as a copy editor on everything from film titles through to high-end property magazines. In her spare time, when not at gigs, you’ll find her at her local stables hanging out with a bunch of extremely characterful horses.

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