Label: UNFD
Released: 19th March 2021
Rating: ★★★
Five albums in and ERRA are as unrelentingly powerful as ever. Machine gun breakbeats, howling screams, guttural growls – it’s all packed into a self-titled album that is bursting with riffs fit to cause a catastrophe and relish in the fact.
Indeed, there’s no messing about. Darting about mercilessly, the rabid guitars flurry, eyes wide, into the euphoria of singer and guitarist Jesse Cash’s vocals. Certainly, there’s an expected aspect at play here – all those hard-worn, classic tropes were always going to feature on an album that delves into the darkness – but it’s the moments that swing left that really makes this an encapsulating listen, including ‘Remnant’ which morphs into something positively groovy with a hip-swinging guitar solo that completely subverts the brashness of everything before it in the best way possible.
‘ERRA’ is a defiant step forward into a crunching and rage-filled chapter for the Alabama boys, and certainly, they refuse to be homed in by any form of expectation. The future looks bleakly bright for these prog-metal merchants.
