![]() This is conspicuous, considering even future garage co-conspirators like Erra and Littlefoot have been known to rely on the odd rattling mid-frequency to get things jumping. While recent genre-hopping albums by Toddla T and Chrissy Murderbot aim their shots squarely at the overclocked party market, Sully eschews outré eclecticism, wobbly saw waves and dancehall shoutouts in favour of a consistently flat-plan style reminiscent of Burial sans the reverb-drenched veneer. Yes, his is an amalgamation of styles, but it's always applied to a strict framework constituting what is and is not 'acceptable'. In the same way bands like Immortal and Darkthrone aligned themselves with True Black Metal (a puritanical, no-nonsense movement rejecting the gimmicky tropes employed by the mainstream), Sully is at pains to create an untainted, pure essence form of bass music. And yet for all this about-facedness, there's something in Carrier that retains what I've come to recognise as the proclaimed Spirit of Metal – the core values that make metal what it is, even when experimenters like Ulver break off into many other styles without losing credibility.įor one, there's a stringent adherence to the concepts of 'True' and 'False'. It's as though in becoming Sully, Jack Stevens has upped-roots and walked to the opposite end of the musical map. This swinging, shuffling bass music reconciles the various microgenres of future garage, dubstep, UK funky and Chicago footwork under one consistent sound. Neither is it the kind of thing you'd expect from someone who grew up on the white-hot squall of black metal bands like Emperor and Mayhem. Carrier bears no resemblance to the schlocky brostep grind that seems to have enchanted so many rock and metal fans of late. I couldn't have guessed at Sully's identity from the music alone. ![]() One day an album by a shadowy 2-step producer lands on my doormat. Soon labels like Night Slugs and Hessle Audio were fusing it with house, funky, grime, juke, rave and crunk to create a universal bass sound uncomfortably labelled 'post-dubstep'. Bass-hungry listeners seeking respite from dubstep's increasing ubiquity began searching round for alternatives. Like electro before, dubstep had transcended its status as a mere genre, transmogrifying as it pleased until it had wormed through every nook and cranny of the new musical spectrum. In fact they lapped it up as acts like Flux Pavilion and Borgore re-synthesised nu-metal and emo through splat-happy chainsaw wob. Even the metal fans were jumping on the bandwagon. Everyone from pop princesses to blue-eyed poshboys started adopting dubstep as their own. Then, quite typically, I had to go and eat a hat. And I laughed and said it would never catch on in any commercial sense. In the intervening years this weird slow bass music called dubstep started gaining currency among a certain breed of UK clubber. So yes, Jack sacked off to Norwich with his haircut and his accent, never to be heard from again - or so I thought. Still, I couldn't help feeling perplexed, upon our last encounter, to find Jack Stevens shorn of head and affecting a rude Jafaican drawl – the kind of behaviour that'd get you turfed out the True Metal Fan Club faster than you can growl "'The Splendour Of A Thousand Swords Gleaming Beneath The Blazon Of A Hyperborean Empire (Part III)'". This very website is testament to the diverse tastes of even the most dedicated metal fans. I've known many a hardcore metaller harbouring a secret love for the likes of ABBA, the Commodores, ELO - even cheesed-out happy hardcore and Euro-trance. That said, there's almost always an exception to prove the rule. Being true to True Metal requires a complicated hopscotch: step on the wrong square and you risk sullying (pun intended) your metal name. Those who dare dabble in other arenas are often treated by their peers with marked suspicion. Metal fans are an obstinate bunch by reputation – perhaps the most tribal of cliques. The Jack Stevens I knew was a reticent metalhead playing dextrous sheet-glass guitar for local Darkthrone-a-likes Niroth. But as I puzzled over Carrier, a chance Google search revealed to me that I used to hang out with this guy once upon a time. Living, as I do, in a commuter belt limbo boasting a citizenship of peculiarly large forehead size, it's not every day I get the chance to drop a name. ![]()
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