BongCauldron
Binge
APF Records
Release: 30th November 2017

It’s taken a long time for BongCauldron’s debut full-length album Binge to see the light of day. Formed in the pubs of Leeds in 2011 the trio’s early recordings were unleashed in August of 2012, with their eponymous first EP released in January 2014 to widespread critical acclaim. Since then only five Bongers songs have been made commercially available: 2014’s Bigfoot Reigns, the following year’s Acid Cattle EP (containing the title track and Swamp Law), and the two free downloads the band put out prior to this year’s Riff Fest: Scrubber Cider and I’ve Been Sick.

I was initially nervous about how BongCauldron would sound without Tom Wright (who recorded all of the abovementioned releases) at the controls. I needn’t have worried, as Chris Fielding has captured our Yorkshire boys immaculately – and mastering wunderkind James Plotkin has made Binge sound properly fierce.

If the debut EP was the sound of a garage band giving their amps and the PA a good hammering, Binge is its sleeker and wiser and more muscular big brother. This is immediately apparent on opening cut Devil, which is pure BongCauldron: a mid-pace groove, riffs the size of small continents, and the twin vocal attack of Corky and Biscuit. It’s a tour de force way to open an album, and yet its no way near the best track on it. Yep, Binge is that good.

Bongers fans will already be familiar with Bury Your Axe In The Crania Of Lesser Men from their live shows. But no one will have heard 68, a full-pelt Motorhead-pace rattler featuring Dave Rowlands of Pist on vocals in the chorus. It’s amazing because of Biscuit and Corky’s massive growling, the sublime bridge section where Rowlands sound like he’s making his throat bleed, and because of Jay’s monstrous double-bass-pedal drumming.

But 68 is merely an aperitif for the album’s eight and a half minute long title track. Binge, the song, is to these ears the culmination of everything BongCauldron have built towards over the last five years. It is a huge, pregnant, lumbering beast of a tune that twists and turns and builds towards a wicked climax. It contains Biscuit’s best ever vocal, and Jay’s most sublime just-behind-the-beat shuffle drumming. Corky’s bass becomes the lead instrument in a mid-song interlude which has become my favourite Bongers moment ever.

Side two kicks off with a re-recorded Bigfoot Reigns, which remains a great song and fits in perfectly here. Hopeless starts with a lovely picked guitar line from Ryan before he moves into yet another top-drawer, earworm riff. Toxic Boglin has a killer bridge again (these boys are the best bridge-section writers in the business I reckon), as does Yorkshire Born – which graduates from up-tempo stomper to groove monolith in its second half.

What BongCauldron have done with 8 eights tracks over 40 minutes is deliver on their early promise. They have made a thrilling, dirty, great big heavy rock album. There’s no point calling it sludge or doom or stoner rock, because it isn’t any of them - albeit elements of all three can be heard in the Bongers melting pot. Binge is a paradox: immediate and accessible, yet thoroughly obtuse and uncompromising.

I’ve listened to this album at least 100 times since the band first gave it to me in the Spring. I’m nowhere near bored of hearing it. Binge is, quite simply, a fucking wonderful record. I can’t wait for you all to hear it.