Befitting their name, Mountaineer keep moving forward and keep moving upward. In just five years, what began as a two-man studio project has evolved into a full band with an eye for detail and an ear for the epic. And now they’ve made their best album yet.
The San Francisco outfit’s debut was solid if slightly staid post-metal, intriguing in places but perhaps hewn too close to the genre template to truly stand out. 2018’s ‘Passages’ was bigger and better but then founding members Clayton Bartholomew (ex-Secrets of the Sky, ex-Lycus) and vocalist Miguel Meza (ex-Ashes of American Flags) added a new drummer, two new guitarists, better production, and a ton of power and passion to the mix. The end result is Bloodletting.
This is high-quality skyscraping metal, doom, gloom, and shoegaze. No, wait, that’s not quite right. This is anti-doom- intent on crushing you with light and not darkness- and more like stargaze than shoegaze. Mountaineer still make music for fans of Neurosis, Old Man Gloom, and Cult of Luna but there’s cosmic dust, beams of light, and experimental flair here. This is a record focused on supernova sounds, grand themes, and the great beyond.
