Yoke

If “the self-indulgent joy of stupidly loud amplifiers and feedback” is a sequence of words that gets your motor running, then Yoke might be your new favourite band.

That introductory quote are the words of Yoke’s guiatist Daniel Foggin (who also records cosmic, hypnotic psychedelic rock under the name Smote), who joined by his brother Tommy Foggin on vocals and drums and Mark Brown (also from Smote) on bass to form this magnificant power trio. And here we have their debut release – a five-song, 35-minute S/T LP that absolutely rips.

From the deceptively slowburn intro of torture-toned opener ‘Coil’ to the Neanderthal-rhythmed blowout of parting shot ‘Me-Time’, Yoke is a melted mass of metal, punk, noise and psych whose musical ethos strips things down as much as possible but whose result befouls all the oxygen in the room.

Daniel craved an outlet for the sort of dirgeful, distorted underground rock that definitely doesn’t exhibit mystical leanings or a folk influence – American doom extremists Khanate and The Body, Butthole Surfers-meets-Shit and Shine teamup USA/Mexico, and grotty Brooklynites Twin Stumps are all in the ether as influences. Their north-east England locale has a fine pedigree on this front, too, with bands like Drunk In Hell, Foot Hair and Khünnt all standing tall in recent history.

Yoke is assuredly a different beast from Smote, but there’s a common thread in the proverbial power of the riff, and the two Foggins plus Mark can still zone you out with bludgeoning repetition: ‘Coil’, stretched to almost 12 minutes, demonstrates this majorly. Daniel also pulls out a few solos with Stooges-like mean acid vibes, as on ‘Rubies’. Tommy rattles out a rhythm you can groove to and chokes out lyrics one syllable at a time for ‘Kiln’, with junk-sculpted guitar noise and low end heft doing the rest. ‘Working Person’ is Yoke at their most uptempo, Daniel locking in to full psychedelic speed freak mode, and ‘Me-Time’ tips the scale into sludge metal overload.

As it is, this is one to scorch your ears to if you’ve thrilled with anything with stupidly loud amplifiers and feedback front and centre.

released October 20, 2023