Cloud Rat/Moloch – Split (Review)

Cloud Rat are a grindcore band from the US and Moloch are a sludge metal band from the UK.

Always inventive, passionate and interesting, Cloud Rat start us off with seven songs, lasting just over 18 minutes.

It’s always great to hear something new from this talented band. If you haven’t checked out the mighty Qliphoth, I recommend that you do.

The songs on this split are top quality, as I’ve come to expect from Cloud Rat. Managing to combine serrated violence with emotive energy and even some amount of reflective thought, Cloud Rat continue to impress with their intelligent and creative take on how grindcore should sound.

I love how individual and atypical Cloud Rat are. I love how savage and vicious they can sound at one moment, while also managing to insert moments of added depth and extra content into their music the next. This just causes them to be way better than most who play in the style. I’ve described them tentatively as progressive grindcore in the past, and I think that still holds.

They end things with Amber Flush, the longest song here and a very atmospheric slice of darkly sensual electronic rock. Unexpected, but very welcome.

Impressive.

Moloch offer us over 19 minutes of music, but poured into just two tracks. Not to be confused with the Ukrainian band of the same name, this is my first exposure to this UK sludge behemoth, and I very much like what I hear.

In complete contrast to the energetic, fiery Cloud Rat, Moloch are downbeat, filthy, and full of darkness and harrowing terror. Playing the type of dank, ugly sludge that’s straight from the Eyehategod school of badassery, (it’s a word…), Moloch expand on the standard sludge template with a couple of tracks that emphasise the doom side of sludge and sound like they’ve crawled straight from the swamp.

Drenched in weighty distortion and bleak aggression, the songs are slow, heavy, and crushing. If you’re a fan of music that’s like a relentless steamroller flattening everything in its path, then Moloch are very easy to get on board with.

These two songs have certainly hit the mark for me, and they act as a more than suitable juxtaposition to Cloud Rat’s side of the release.

I love a good split, and this is one of the most enjoyable ones I’ve heard of late.

Make sure this one is on your to-get list.