Lurching forth from the blackened sewers of Manchester (UK) come Leeched with their debut album You Took The Sun When You Left (Prosthetic). UK metal is in a frankly fantastic place now, whether large or small the sheer amount of genuinely exciting and vital bands is staggering. Leeched are hot the heels of UK luminaries Employed To Serve and Conjurer with their own monolithic take on the crushing doom/hardcore sound.

This is not music for the faint of heart and, as the album title suggests, this band isn’t holding anything back. This bleak, stark and violent music feels so wrought with emotion it drags you along as if your skin was being ripped off your body and there’s not much you can do to stop it. Even the name of the band was always in the back of my mind whilst listening to the album; that feeling that the songwriters had been through hell and this was the sound of them crawling back out of whatever abyss they found themselves in…

What Leeched have that sets them apart from others in the UK is an almost Nails-like quality to not only the riffing, but also the production. When songs like ‘Cripple The Herd’ and ‘The Rope’ are played with this kind of intensity and pure unadulterated rage you feel every single word and note. I can’t even begin to imagine what this will end up sounding like live.

Just like Nails, the songs never, ever outstay their welcome. Indeed, the entire album is barely half an hour long which for some maybe a blessing in disguise, not for me though as it implores me to multiple listens. A glutton for glorious punishment I may be, but when the tempo is switched up for doomier sludgier cuts like ‘Mouthful Of Dirt’ Leeched reach the kind of heaviness that Black Tongue so expertly maintain. Heavy not for the sake of being heavy, but in the way that a sledgehammer is used to crush breezeblocks… you know, heavy with a fucking purpose.

The vocal delivery is worthy of comment on its own. Yes, its heavy and yes, every sinew is tearing as each lyric is screamed and bellowed down the mic, but there was something else – an extra rawness in certain places that I could only align with sludge metal legends Eyehategod. Yeah, it gets that good on this album, no BS.

I found, even in the midst of some of the bleakest music I’ve heard this year, the whole album to be infectious and catchy in a weird way. I was remembering riffs and passages almost straight away it was almost like the band were leeching off me… (see what I did there?!). I felt everything that the band have put into this album; the energy and intensity is always there melding and contorting with the weight and dark atmosphere created. Get ready for the grimmest, bleakest but lovely time of your miserable life, because Leeched are a band who will end up right up alongside the best that the UK metal scene has to offer.

8.0/10

KIERAN MITCHELL