Many moons ago I was listening to more ‘emocore’ acts such as Poison the Well, and it was at one of the band's shows I first encountered Cult of Luna, who were playing support for some reason. A man at a podium with some kind of electronic gadget we couldn’t see started making noises and slowly a band appeared. Last on the stage was a singer, who took straight to the microphone with a strained roar as a riff-to-end-all-riffs came crashing down onto us unsuspecting kids. Since then I have always liked Cult of Luna’s crushing groove and epic song-writing, but surprisingly I was less taken by Isis. Anyway, long story short, Manatees are about as close to those bands as England is going to produce. And they are pretty damn close.

The opening bars of the album do in fact sound a lot like old Poison the Well, but soon this gives way to the chugging marathon of a song that is simply titled ‘I’. The, often deceptively, simple track twists and turns for its’ full 15 minutes, while crawling through thunderous noise to leave just a bass kick pounding along with an incomprehensible verse screamed out as if lives depended on it and then navigates back and forth between shimmering guitars and deeeeep rumblings. Thankfully, after surviving that,  mellower pieces with chanting and hypnotic background rhythms take up the next few places on the CD. But whatever one's favorite song may be it can be said that across the 5 tracks of this debut release, Manatees don’t drop the baton once.

The only slight shocker isn’t to do with their musicianship, it’s that the band is signed to Motivesounds. The same Motivesounds who until now have been known mostly as purveyors of slightly heavier post-rock acts Mt./CtrlAltDelete, Let Airplanes Cirlce Overhead and Capulet, now home to a group closer to Neurosis than any of the above. This is definitely a shot in the arm for the label, which was running the risk of becoming a one-trick pony with its’ ‘samey’ roster. So my advice would be hang onto this lot; they are going places. Now and all the band need is a hit like “The Watchtower” or “False Light” and they can get going there.

-Ian Nicholls