Caltrop

It's reasonable to saddle Caltrop with an adjective like mighty: The Chapel Hill quartet is, after all, a powerful outfit. Thing is, they wield their heft gracefully like the tides, as though the typical scale by which we humans measure things just doesn't apply. There's something earthy and elemental about Caltrop's music. Easily but incompletely categorized as metal, this band lumbers and roars as forcefully as any crew of doomsters worth their sludge, but its focus dwells not on the descent, but the ascent. Fittingly, among the highlights of Caltrop's full-length debut, 2008's World Class, there is the nine-and-a-half-minute "Ascendant."

"I'd like to take everything," singer/guitarist Sam Taylor declares. "I said I might take everything/ And place it up on high/ To gain perspective I've never known." Behind him, his guitar and Adam Nolton's twist around each other in warm, hazy tones. Bassist Murat Dirlik joins in the unison fills, then takes his own stop-time lead. Drummer John Crouch (also of Horseback) gives his bandmates a sturdy foundation of thunder and precision. In the instrumental final third of the song, Caltrop unfurls its most metallic elements. But even here, the band can't rest on a simple riff. Within this one song, the band's influences coalesce—thoughtful, resonant Americana and blues, melodic prog-rock and burly blues metal. The band conjures a spiritually attuned Kyuss or a more grounded Mastodon.

World Class' deft balance of power and finesse, of earth and cosmos, proved a soundly satisfying offering. But one new Caltrop song, "Blessed," is online (in video format) and teasing the band's recently recorded second LP. It suggests a greater melodic confidence and greater emphasis on harmony. The band that earned the right to be called mighty seems to be growing mightier still. —Bryan Reed