Band:	Urzah
Album:	The Scorching Gaze
Style:	Post-metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	May 2024

01. I, Empyrean
02. Lacrimare
03. Immateria Noir
04. (Interlude)
05. A Storm Is Ever Approaching
06. The Aesthetic
07. Of Decay
08. Thera I: Sea Of Flames
09. Thera II: Embers Of Descent

Between 2022’s EP II and their full debut The Scorching Gaze, Urzah self-imposed moniker ‘earthy noise’ has been rebranded as ’earthen heaviness’. It’s a logical revision, as Urzah’s music is plenty heavy, and plenty more than mere noise.

Bristol’s Urzah appeared on my radar in 2022 with the aforementioned II EP that I covered for Clandestine Cuts. At the time, I described their sound as been grounded in sludge metal, but also incorporating songwriting elements from progressive and post-metal, and maintaining a range of approaches that spanned slow, brooding heaviness and up-tempo aggression. On pretty much all fronts, The Scorching Gaze maintains all of these facets from II; at the same time, however, it represents a very clear upgrade on the songwriting front.

When it comes to progressive sludge, Mastodon are always a tempting band to compare to, and there are certainly moments on this album that bear a resemblance, none more so than in the very Leviathan-esque closing minutes of “Thera I (Sea Of Flames)”. However, on the whole, The Scorching Gaze’s sound draws from more recent bands; when listening to it, I’ve found myself struggling to find the most appropriate bands to reference, but those who have previously enjoyed the likes of Conjurer, Minsk, Psychonaut, or Urne are likely to find something to appreciate in Urzah’s sound here. There’s a solid balance between crunching heaviness, progressive complexity and expansion, and more atmospheric musings.

There’s also some potentially unexpected genre explorations as well, particularly in the middle portion of the album. Kicked off by an electronic “(Interlude)” with a hint of Boards Of Canada to it, this sequence of shorter songs covers a belligerent bout of metallic hardcore (“A Storm Is Ever Approaching”), a subdued, clean quasi-interlude (on which guest vocalist Eleanor Tinlin takes a leading role), and finally a groove-laden juggernaut in the form of “Of Decay”. There’s a couple of passages in particular in this song that are right out of the Pelagic wheelhouse in featuring a complex polyrhythm laying beneath guitar grooving that is simultaneously dense yet almost relaxed, and that approach works really nicely.

However, it’s really in the opening and closing stretches of The Scorching Gaze where Urzah exhibit their full potential. In its early skirmishes, the album features tasty rowdiness on “I, Empyrean” that somewhat scratches the High On Fire itch, but there’s already some subtle hints woven into the guitarwork that point towards the band’s capacity for lighter tones, something that is further accentuated by faint backing vocals from Tinlin. “Lacrimare (Misery’s Shadow)” shakes things up with an almost mathy energy to its opening and some ear-catching melodic guitar motifs, and it also features the first moments in which Urzah’s post-metal influences begin to be heard; however, it’s “Immateria Noir” that really makes a strong impact. There’s a real Pelagic post-metal current flowing through some of the riffing on this song, and the song flows so satisfyingly through its various riffs and passages, especially when it widens out the soundscapes in the final third.

As great as “Immateria Noir” is, it is potentially rivalled by the two-part closing song “Thera”. Part I (“Sea Of Flames”) is the longest track on the record at 9 minutes, and before the Leviathan-isms at the end mentioned earlier in this review, it delivers nasty, lurching doomy sludge, languid post-metal waves of sound, and a brief yet tasteful solo. All this spacious build-up serves as a great platform for the hench, rambunctious “Iron Tusk”-style stomping it eventually segues into, and that level of heaviness is sustained in the grim, brooding Part II (“Embers Of Descent”) that rounds out the album.

I mentioned in my Clandestine Cuts write-up of II that there was room to grow for Urzah in refining how they fused their different musical ideas; they have certainly grown in the past 2 years, as The Scorching Gaze is a remarkably mature album, and one that makes for really satisfying listening.