North Carolina based We Follow the Earth has only been putting out music for a couple years now, but they’ve maintained a steady pace of releases and each one has continued to expand the group’s musical approach. Initially formed as a solo project by Matthew Crotts, by the time Extinct came out in 2024 We Follow the Earth had expanded into a full band and begun to explore more atmospheric and melodic elements alongside the crushing sludge and doom of Lightbearer. This year’s Foamdrinker further blurs the lines between sludge, doom, and post metal by moving seamlessly from dense and heavy grooves to shimmering melodies and more subtle textures. It’s a lengthy effort at just under an hour, but the band covers a lot of ground in this timespan and has a lot to offer fans of everything low and slow.
The title track kicks things off with on the sludge/doom ends of the spectrum, letting a slow burning groove expand over the course of its six minute and forty-five second run. You’ll immediately notice that the way the song ebbs and flows has more of a traditional doom flair to it, but the sheer weight and gnarly tonality of the guitar and bass bring more of that sludge feel to things. While that song has a bit more of a straightforward cadence in how it’s built off that central groove, by the time you get to “Maelstrom” the writing opens up significantly and We Follow the Earth showcases there’s a lot more to their material than the usual doom trappings. “Maelstrom” stretches outward in a methodical manner, letting the low-end lurch forward until about the halfway point when the distortion fades out and some haunting melodies take over. The more subtle details on the second half and the way the song builds until its peak reminds me a lot of 2000s era post metal, and this approach is utilized at other points on Foamdrinker. But there’s plenty of variety from song to song, and whether it’s the bluesier swing of “Black Lamp”, the more direct and slightly punk infused “Aeons” or the haunting, ominous melodies of “On Violent Waves” and “Sirens”, there are a lot of details that stuck out on repeat listens. Stylistically it felt like Foamdrinker was coming in somewhere between Sourvein and Isis, meaning sometimes you get very jagged and aggressive grooves while other moments pivot towards somber and deliberate build-ups. The only song I wasn’t crazy about out of the eight was “The Still Blue”, as there are guitar and drum parts that seem to jut out in the mix in a distracting way and the build-up felt overstretched.
While the instrumentals may inject some melodies into the mix, the vocals keep things firmly rooted on the harsher end of the spectrum. Crotts handles all the vocal work, and he has one of those low growls and yells that comes through with a considerable amount of weight and power. Foamdrinker has been mixed in a way so that the growls don’t completely overwhelm the rest of the band and sometimes feel like they’re slightly in the background, but the amount of echo still gives off a commanding presence. While the pitch isn’t close, the way the vocals are mixed reminds me a bit of post metal like Rosetta as the use of power and restraint in how everything comes through in a similar way. There are some subtle shifts in pitch from song to song, but don’t expect any drastic swings between highs and lows like you sometimes hear in doom of this type.
On their third release We Follow the Earth has built upon their previous foundation, offering a bit more of the aggressive and melodic sides of their sound. You still get plenty of destructive, weighty grooves that have the grit and grime of sludge, but the reflective and atmospheric build-ups of post metal appear a bit more often and are woven in well with the more direct elements. Add in some dips into hazier psychedelia (especially on the closing track), and you have material that does a good job of encompassing everything doom adjacent while having the songwriting to keep things interesting. A few moments are a bit overstretched, but overall there’s a lot to like about what this group has done and it’s impressive to see how far they’ve already come in three years. Foamdrinker is available digitally with a CD release coming soon from Nespithe Records.
-Review by Chris Dahlberg