-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Slow Crush
ALBUM...: Thirst
GENRE...: Indie
STYLE...: Shoegaze
YEAR....: 2025
LABEL...: Pure Noise
COUNTRY.: Belgium
PLACE...: Leuven, Vlaams-Brabant
FORMED..: 2016
ENCODER.: LAME 3.100 -V0
BITRATE.: 262 kbps avg
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / Joint Stereo
SOURCE..: CD
TRACKS..: 10
SIZE....: 79.58 MB
URL..: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Crush
https://www.facebook.com/slowcrushband
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/slow-crush/thirst/
https://staticsoundsclub.com/2025/08/29/slow-crush-thirst-album-review
https://www.transcendedmusic.de/2025/08/slow-crush-thirst-review
https://boolintunes.com/reviews/album-review-slow-crush-thirst
https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/slow-crush-thirst
- TRACKLIST
1 Thirst 4:18
2 Covet 3:22
3 Cherry 4:47
4 Leap 4:41
5 Hollow 2:49
6 Haven 3:55
7 While You Dream Vividly 4:39
8 Bloodmoon 4:20
9 ╙gilt 3:27
10 Hl²tt 5:51
Total Playtime: 42:09
Belgian nu-gazers Slow Crush continue to balance bliss and the abyss with
immersive flair.
Earlier this summer, Slowdive's appearance at Manchester's Outbreak marked a
high-water mark for shoegaze's acceptance in punk rock circles. The not
dissimilarly-named Slow Crush have helped clear that path, touring with
hardcore-inclined bands and increasingly incorporating heavier elements into
their delicate and doleful sound over the last eight years. That sonic
trajectory continues on third full-length Thirst, even as their approach
broadens in subtler ways.
The signature Slow Crush formula remains intact as they whip up a
warmly-textured wall of sound, its shelter blissful yet melancholy. However,
rather than coasting on their established identity, Thirst proves a
repository for new ideas that swerve the generic. Covet opens with glitching
acoustic guitar, blossoms into unusually catchy dreampop and then throws a
saxophone into its conclusion, while Hollow's floaty ambience gradually
darkens, cutting out just as harsh vocals can be detected buried deep in the
mix.
There's a sense of foreboding at such points that perfectly balances the
band's tendencies towards beauty, making for their most dynamic and
satisfying release yet. At times, notably the final minute of closer Hl tt,
proceedings cross over into blackgaze territory. Elsewhere, Thirst offers
little nods to My Bloody Valentine, whether through note-bending guitar
figures, bassist Isa Holliday's ethereal vocals, or suitably woozy titles
like While You Dream Vividly. On the latter, Isa sings of 'Drifting from this
world', encapsulating this immersive music's ability to transport the
listener to somewhere out of time and place.
The enveloping accessibility of Cherry and the title track seem designed to
welcome more people into Slow Crush's world, strengthening what the band have
described as "the fragility of human connection." Anyone seeking exquisite,
emotional shoegaze will find their desires quenched by Thirst.
*
There's something in the water in Belgium, a nation that has produced
numerous quality post metal bands ranging from Wiegedood to Brutus, and
Hippotraktor to the mighty Amenra! As such, it may be easy for a band like
Slow Crush to get lost in the shuffle. Though the Belgian quartet have found
a niche with what has been described as a blackened shoegaze style of metal,
expertly blending more traditional metal elements with psychedelic rock. My
personal introduction to the band came in late 2021, coinciding with the
band's release of "Hush". Since then, the band have been busy appearing on
festival line ups all across Europe, as well touring across the continent and
further afield to the USA, supporting the likes of Cult Of Luna and GGGOLDDD
in the process. Almost exactly four years after "Hush", the band are on the
eve of releasing their next album via Pure Noise Records, "Thirst". How will
this stack up compared to older material? Only one way to find out...
The album begins with the title track 'Thirst'. Immediately, the production
values have seen a major upgrade since their previous releases! Here,
everything sounds crisp, sharp, more full and vibrant. Yet there's still just
enough grit there to make this feel not overly polished but feeling organic
and authentic. The band reported spending considerable time with producer
Lewis Johns, having worked with the likes of Rollo Tommasi, and Svalbard. All
this extra effort has paid off, especially in some of those huge immersive
and atmospheric soundscapes in both 'Bloodmoon' and 'While You Dream
Vividly'. Whilst they had utilised similar elements in previous releases,
it's only really after having worked with Johns that they've been able to
make this step up in production quality and achieve this far superior end
product.
This extra studio work is evident in the much sharper and heavier guitars
where the distortion is dialled in just enough to make your head
involuntarily rock back and forth without overpowering the more sensitive and
melodic elements in the mix. Check out 'Covet' and the tale end of 'Leap' for
some jaw dropping guitar tones!
Vocally, Isa Halliday is once again the star of the show and a crucial cog in
Slow Crush's overall sound. Soothing, gentle and dripping with human
sentiment, 'Haven' is perhaps the best track to illustrate her undeniable
talent, where the guitars and other instruments are stripped back and her
unique voice is able to receive all the attention it deserves. Although the
lyrics themselves aren't always clearly enunciated, there's a unique tranquil
and soothing quality to her voice which acts almost like a fifth instrument,
alongside the 2 guitars, bass, and drums. This juxtaposes wonderfully against
the aforementioned roughly distorted guitars, all of which form Slow Crush's
highly individual sound.
It's difficult to pick out one stand out song in the album (though you'll
probably find yourself humming along to the infectious and instantly
memorable melody of 'Hollow', just like I did). Instead, it's one to be
enjoyed in it's entirety and to just allow that blackened shoegaze goodness
to wash over you.
Overall, "Thirst" represents an exciting new chapter for Slow Crush, a band
who are constantly evolving and committed to self-improvement. They've
clearly found a niche and unique sound. Now it's time to get more ears on
this and for their gift to be shared with the world.
*
Since forming in Leuven, Belgium in 2017, Slow Crush have delivered some
memorable and enjoyable shoegaze, by turns melodic and abrasive. The
four-piece's 2018 debut full-length album Aurora was characterized by thick,
crunching riffs from guitarists Jelle Ronsmans and the since-departed Jan
Jouck, but the sound of its 2021 follow-up Hush was somewhat softer and
gentler, featuring a subtler, more melodic guitar sound and haunting vocal
performances. They are also an enchanting and atmospheric live band,
something I got to witness myself when they supported Gouge Away at a show in
London in 2019. With their third album, Thirst, Slow Crush said in
pre-release statements that they have aimed to deliver their heaviest riffs
and dreamiest vocals yet, as part of a sound that bassist and lead vocalist
Isa Holliday says is intended to be "experience[d]...in 4D."
The album is off to a commanding opening with the immediacy of "Thirst" and
equally urgent "Covet." These songs achieve an affecting contrast between the
soft, beguiling melodicism of Holliday's vocals and the heaviness of Ronsmans
and Nic Placl 's overdriven guitars. In less skilled hands, the disparity
between these two sonic qualities might sound jarring, but become
complementary in Slow Crush's hands. They employ a seamless use of a
saxophone at the end of "Covet," taking a sometimes jarring instrument and
blending it naturally into the mix. The guitars on "Cherry" and "Leap" are
slightly softer in places, but Ronsmans and Placl maintain their alternately
solid and wailing tones. On "Hollow," in combination with Frederik Meeuwis'
drums, they remain abrasive in a more treble-dominated manner than any of the
other songs on Thirst's first side.
"Haven" and "While You Dream Vividly" are two heavy but relatively downtempo
songs, the latter of which is perhaps the album's best-executed realization
of the band's stated intentions for its sound, with Holliday's vocals at
their dreamiest as she and her bandmates play thunderously. She maintains
this soothing, lullaby-style quality to her singing on the slower
"Bloodmoon." The album's penultimate track, the soft, instrumental " gilt,"
offers some welcome levity after all the firepower that has preceded it,
before closer "Hl tt" brings the record to a dramatic end. The song is a
barnstorming, six-minute epic, on which Ronsmans and Placl 's abrasive
guitars are bolstered by some screamed backing vocals-a satisfying conclusion
to an album on which the band's performances live up to their stated
intentions for the development of their sound.
Thirst is Slow Crush's best album yet. On it, they successfully blend the
loud guitars that characterized Aurora with the soothing, haunting vocals
that dominated Hush. Ronsmans' and Placl 's performance styles remain at
their peak, and Holliday's vocals remain as beguiling as ever. With an
abundance of enjoyable songs, Thirst reinforces Slow Crush's status as a band
that stands out within an increasingly crowded contemporary shoegaze scene
through thoughtful songwriting and musicianship that has a precise,
intentional brutality to it.
*
- The Belgian shoegazers' noisier and more mature third record takes the form
of a hopeful manifesto that the human race still has the opportunity to
reinvent itself. -
The claim that an artist has to go away in order to be missed is, like every
oft-repeated yet rarely examined axiom, as much of a fallacy as it can be a
truism. That's especially clear in the current era, in which some musicians
reunite because they truly miss creating art together while others do so for
cash-grab purposes. Belgium's Slow Crush haven't broken up and reunited since
coagulating nearly a decade ago, but they've perfected the art of gauging
when the time is right to step up and present a musical creation of which
they're proud-and, alternately, when to take a seat in the back of the room
as listeners savor their work while the band allows their ensuing artistic
impulses to organically gestate and follow the path of a natural birth.
To put it in starker terms, Slow Crush materialized around the time of the
second coming of shoegaze, and, as a band that comfortably fits within that
mold, they opted against capitalizing on the trend that could've loaded up
their bank accounts. Instead, the quartet founded by bassist/vocalist Isa
Holliday and guitarist Jelle Ronsmans let their pulverizing 2018 debut,
Aurora, nourish listeners like plump raindrops rejuvenating a parched desert
floor before returning three years later with Hush, a record brilliantly
written from the perspective of songcraft but more emotionally distant, even
abrasive, toward the listener.
Which brings us to Thirst, an album nearly four years in the waiting that
Slow Crush's fanbase would hope-based on its title alone-to see serve as a
Gatorade-like quencher for their years-long desire that the Belgians sate
them with the majestic music that put them on the map in the first place. The
band's third outing reintroduces them as harbingers of a certain hope that
the entire world currently craves more than oil, economic justice, and even
sustenance (well, at least before the ramifications of USAID's gutting are
fully exposed). With drummer Frederik Meeuwis and guitarist Nic Plackl in
tow, Thirst is effectively a manifesto that the human race still has the
opportunity to reinvent itself-or at least to regain some karma by atoning
for the widespread horrors that are now so commonly known.
Best of all, Slow Crush, exhibiting or perhaps even flaunting their maturity,
deliver their diatribe with the forcefulness of a traumatized individual
finally standing up to a bully. Whereas Slow Crush's first two albums mostly
relegated their noisier songs to side A and their more ethereal tracks to
side B, only two of the 10 songs presented here ("Hollow" and " gilt") are
ephemeral-sounding. The others vie for the best bangers the band has ever
brandished; "Covet," "Cherry," and "Haven" practically pin Slow Crush's balls
to the wall. If the band manages to exceed this record, they'll defy
imagination-theirs and ours.
-=- SHGZ -=-
-=-=-==-=-=-
Shoegaze
is a genre of alternative rock that
originated in the late 80s. The genre is very
difficult to define, and it is even more difficult to evaluate music
within it. Generally, the genre is characterized by its
shimmering vocals, reverberating guitars, and
textural distortion that create
a tranquil, opaque
feeling.
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