Surroundings are a Hardcore/Sludge band from the United States. Not being very familiar with Hardcore, the background and history of this band is a little obscure for me. The band has come up with a split and an album.
Surroundings play an aggressive and heavy style of hardcore punk, and combine that speed and aggression with the crushing heaviness of sludge. The album consists of 11 songs, 8 of them with a typical hardcore punk song length of under two minutes, and pounding aggression and blazing grindcore-like speed, but occasionally slowing down to smash the listener with crushing heaviness. The other 3 songs, clocking over 3 minutes are, needless to say, sludge tracks. That makes Surroundings a rather short album clocking only 25 minutes. The album starts off with World Of Failure, which is a straight-to-the-face hardcore song, followed by another very short and aggressive hardcore song Virgilkapelle. Both the tracks are impossible to tell apart, and hence seem like one continuous song. The two songs are followed by a rather mid-paced, almost sludge song Harvesting Dirt, which gives the listener an idea of Surrounding's style of sludge. Unlike a lot of other sludge bands, they plays slowed-down hardcore, rather than distortion and feedback-laden, bluesy, Black Sabbath-influenced sludge/doom. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of feedback and heavy distortion involved here, but just lacks that Sabbath-like feeling.
The vocalist is consistent is churning out typical hardcore punk screams, and adds an immense amount of energy to the already energetic music heard here. Even thought the drummer doesn't stand out in terms of playing style or technique, the snare and cymbals are quite loud in the mix, which make the drums a major element in their music - adding to the heaviness and crushing quality. Overall, if you are a fan of hardcore punk or sludge, this album is a good listen. Nothing less, nothing more. Nothing stands out or is unique about this band or this album, but it definitely doesn't bore.
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