Band:	Spaceslug
Album:	Out Of Water
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal, Stoner metal
Release date:	May 2024

01. Tears Of Antimatter
02. Arise The Sun
03. Out Of Water
04. Delusions
05. In Serenity

Last year’s Mountain Of Misery, the solo project of Spaceslug drummer Kamil Ziółkowski, served as a stop-gap amid a relatively long break between releases, but 2.5 years after Memorial, Spaceslug are back in their entirety.

They didn’t build much fanfare in anticipation of its arrival, however; I try to keep tabs on the group fairly frequently, but the first I knew of Out Of Water’s release was a notification from Bandcamp on the day of its release. In fairness, Spaceslug are a band that lets their music do the talking instead of their marketing, and across 5 albums, the Polish three-piece have gone from strength to strength, culminating in 2021’s excellent Memorial, which took their unique melancholic stoner/psychedelic sound into some surprisingly intense areas. Out Of Water doesn’t feature any experiments to rival the dalliances into post-metal territory on its predecessor; instead, this album is much a consolidation as anything else.

It's a concise consolidation; at 32 minutes, this is the shortest Spaceslug full album yet, and only 5 minutes longer than 2017 EP Mountains & Reminiscence. The first 6 of those 32 minutes are occupied by “Tears Of Antimatter”, which is perhaps the heaviest track here; while the harsh vocals used on Memorial and Eye The Tide aren’t entirely reprised this time around, there are some quite pained shouts in this song to contrast Ziółkowski’s soft cleans. Additionally, there is a touch of Memorial’s post-metal moments to the guitar tone used in the verses of “Tears Of Antimatter”. Spaceslug are consistently categorized as a stoner band, and the experience of seeing them live last year made that core of their sound clearer to me, but on record, they don’t sound all that similar to much of the stoner scene, even when this opening song segues into a mellower jamlike second half.

One of the things that really distinguishes Spaceslug from the stoner metal seen is the somewhat dark and sad tone heard in quite a few of their songs, particularly since the track “Ahtmosphere” was featured on 2019’s 4-Way Split. On Out Of Water, the album’s longest song “Arise The Sun” offers a return to the vibe of “Ahtmosphere”, as sorrowful guitar leads fill in around the call-and-response vocals that drive the track. Truth be told, I’m not sure if the execution of the vocals across Out Of Water is necessarily the strongest it’s been on a Spaceslug record, but to counter that, I really enjoy the guitar arrangements on this track in particular, especially the signature psychedelic riffs in the climactic phase that always give me a sense of venturing into the unknown whenever the band include them.

For the rest of the record, Spaceslug continue to offer up what amounts to a ‘greatest hits’ of their stylistic elements. Realistically, I’m not sure how many of their fans will consider this to be the greatest display of said elements; after a few listens, I’m inclined to say that Out Of Water will probably rank near the bottom of my list of Spaceslug albums. Having said that, I am a major fan of the group, and I enjoy these elements more than enough for Out Of Water to still satisfy me. The title track mostly picks up where “Arise The Sun” left off, but it does have some tasty fuzzy stoner riffs, along with a real tenderness to its latter stages.

Rounding things out are “Delusions”, which reintroduces some of the sharper heaviness used on the opening track, and “In Serenity”, which touches on most of the cues hit by the preceding songs. “Delusions” is a contender for the record’s most memorable song for its harder edge, which was not unreasonably compared in the album thread to Soundgarden. While the quasi-extremity on Memorial remains the most impressive heaviness used by Spaceslug, the trio are clearly very wise to how best to utilize slightly tougher tones within songs that often feel introspective and shrouded in enigma.

If I was to introduce a newcomer to Spaceslug, I would likely opt for Time Travel Dilemma or Reign Of The Orion, or Memorial if they had enough of a taste for more extreme sounds in metal. Out Of Water would very much be a ‘try this if you like their other ones’ effort; however, it’s still an album that I would recommend to listen to for anyone who did like 'the other ones', as it’s the sound of a thoroughly accomplished band delivering a style that they have absolute control over.