Black Tusk - Taste The Sin

Black Tusk Day only comes once a year. On this day the amount of sludge you listen to is a prediction of how long winter (or summer if you're in the southern hemisphere) will last, where the more sludge you listen to indicates a shorter season. I played Taste The Sin and Set The Dial a few times each last night so I figure they're both due for some review. Since winter here feels like it hasn't even started yet I guess my sludge levels must be through the roof.

Taste The Sin didn't agree with me when I first bought it back in October 2010. The lite-fuzz guitar tone and hardcore beats reminiscent of Kylesa aren't exactly on the top of my favorite sounds list. As I listened to the album it grew on me. There's a lot of fun in the oversimplified riffing, audible mixing, and stoner-themed lyrical content.

Black Tusk describes themselves as "swamp metal." Like other tags such as "pagan metal" and "epic metal" this is retarded and tells me nothing about their music, or does it? The album does have that really musky, almost hazy atmosphere to it, but I really hate when bands try to vaguely describe their own music with words like that. It's usually a marketing ploy or a way to get signed. Anyway my hypocritical bitching aside, there are some really sweet tracks on here. "Red Eyes, Black Skies" and the hardcore-influenced "Way Of The Horse And Bow" are fun tracks, while some of the later tracks are geared more towards stoner metal. The trio of tracks "The Take Off," "The Ride," and "The Crash" are all very hardcore-influenced sludge with some doom-esque breaks. Nothing on Taste The Sin feels heavy enough to be classified as doom metal outright though.

Some of the mid-album tracks do drag a bit just because they don't do enough to distinguish themselves. "Twist The Knife" is pretty forgettable, and personally I don't give a shit about the intro either. However the mixing is what makes Taste the Sin such an engaging listen. The drums, bass, guitar, and multiple vocal pitches are all perfectly audible. As I mentioned there's also a lot of hardcore-influence on here that ranges from simple four-chord punk riffing to d-beats. That might be a turnoff for some people and it certainly was for me, but I gave it enough time to grow and now I'm liking it.

7.5 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	Embrace the Madness
2.	Snake Charmer
3.	Red Eyes, Black Skies
4.	Way of Horse and Bow
5.	Unleash the Wrath
6.	Twist the Knife
7.	Redline
8.	The Take Off
9.	The Ride
10.	The Crash