Review: LOVE•LOVE•LOVE – First Love (EP, 2024) | Hardcore, sludge

Band info

Band: LOVE•LOVE•LOVE
Album: ‘First Love‘
Release: November 1st, 2024
Genre: post-hardcore, sludge
Location: Germany

Review

It jumps at you right out the gate with LOVE•LOVE•LOVE‘s First Love EP. The very first few seconds of this sludge/noise rock / post-hardcore quartet from Lübeck, Germany, leave no space to ambiguity: Intense, brutal and very well produced, this first effort shows some serious intent and a refreshing take on the genre, served with a serious attention to sound quality and clarity.

While the alternation between blasting punk chaos and mid-tempo swarmy riffs is not exactly new, the band succeeds at keeping a real coherence and emotional continuity towards their songs with the clever use of leitmotifs through the highest and lowest tempos. Opening up with a wall of blast beats, the band shows its pleasure quickly in keeping the listener flat-footed, and plays well with expectations of the most experienced heavy metal sound aficionados. LOVE•LOVE•LOVE do a great job at changing form through songs while prolonging some tantalising melodies through style and intensity changes. The use of voice also deserved to be highlighted: in a genre where it often pushes the composition to the back, Love•Love•Love’s use of distant shrieked and screamed remained layered within the chaos, leaving the most space to the guitars. Shifting between heavy rock compositions and more modern hardcore discordant arrangements, the 16-minute, four-track EP calls out some memories of Doomriders or Kverlertak, and keeps calling one back.

Overall, this EP is a thick brick of intense and primal anger, layered with a surprising depth of emotions and creativity, making the most of the four (great) songs spanning a little over a quarter of an hour. It illustrates a wide diversity of influence and a great ability to distil the vast extent of their roots into their chaotic noise hardcore. Now, give us more…

Band info

Review

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