Aural Aggravation

9th June 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Sledges are described as ‘a four piece Alt-metal/Heavy-shoegaze band that blends genres like grunge, metal, shoegaze, emo/post-hardcore, and alternative to craft songs with catchy hooks and big riffs,’ and while this is true, it fails to convey the way the various elements melt into one another to conjure something quite special.

Take the first track, ‘Stumbling as I Fall’: the guitars bend and pixelate in a way that evokes the essence of My Bloody Valentine, but it’s grunged up and beefy, and at the same time the melodic vocals contrast with that thick overdrive, capturing the spirit and sound of ’94, and in particular, Smashing Pumpkins circa Siamese Dream. The title track is harder, heavier, with loping drums melded to a tight, chugging bass underpinning some hefty overdriven guitars that provide the backdrop for vocals that ae by turns breezy and gnarly, offering one of the most overtly metal moments on the EP. I find myself momentarily thinking of Troublegum by Therapy? – a classic example of solid tunes brimming with melody played with hard distortion and some raw aggression – but then Soundgarden also poke their way into my cognisance. If it sounds like I’m simply pulling bands out of the air, it’s very much not the case: Losing Pace simply has that much going on, although the fact that many of the touchstones I’ve referenced thus far are of a 90s vintage does also serve position the various elements which contribute to the Sledges sound.

‘Weightless’ is – ironically – pretty heavy, and it’s not (believe it or not) a criticism to stand it alongside Linkin Park, in that it brings nu-metal heft and a strong emotive hue to a song that’s both riffy and rich with a palpably sincere feeling of angst. It matters because this is no cheap stab at commercialism, and nor it is just another song that tries to alternative by hauling all of the tropes into the mix: there’s a sincerity to this which lends it an indefinable power, and it hits hard.

After a soft acoustic intro, ‘June is Better than July’ goes widescreen, a cinematic burst of post-rock, post-grunge, alt-rock riffcentric extravaganza. There’s a nagging sense that it’s a but emo, a bit ‘things we’re not supposed to like’… but bollocks to those strictures of convention. It’s pure quality, and that’s ultimately what it all boils down to.

Losing Pace was originally released as a four-track twelve-inch, but this new edition, which also marks its first digital release, offers a brace of bonus tracks, in the form of ‘Fading’ and ‘Letters’. The former is the weakest and most overtly emo song of the set, but it’s bathed in reverb and the guitars are bold and overdriven and grungy, and it’s impossible to deny that it’s well-executed. Rounding it off, bonus cut ‘Letters’ is both dreamy and dynamic, melding elements of early Ride and MBV and Chapterhouse with later exponents of shoegaze / nu-gaze like The Early Years as swirling guitars conjure cathedrals of sound around a pumping drum machine.

On Losing Pace, Sledges successfully combine classic and contemporary, and do so with an aptitude and energy, and a keen sense of dynamics. It’s quality all the way.

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AA