The European sludge offensive continues! Some of you might have caught these guys on the Waterloo compilation that came out a while back on Waterloo Records, but that was a good four years ago and through a series of label mishaps it's taken this long for their debut full length to make it's way over here, via the Spanish label Alone who picked the album up after the original label that released it bit the dust. Alone is a perfect home for this stuff, Adrift's complex sludge sitting comfortably next to other contempo arty/psych-warped tarpit-metal bands like Warachetype, Cuzo, El Paramo, and Orthodox. I thought their tracks on that comp were pretty cool, their slightly proggy take on Neurosis/Isis style sludge metal more interesting than a lot of this kind of stuff, and on Monolito they explore that sound further, adding a little more prog influence while keeping their riffs mired in asphalt crunch. The nine songs are more slightly more mathy and more angular than what you hear from your typical Neurosis disciples, and it seems like both Tool and King Crimson influences are at work here. Their sludge is heavy as hell though, massive down tuned riffs and lumbering tempos galore, layered with those math rock moments, angular basslines, drumming that weaves in and out of subtle time signature changes and punishing elephantine crush, the band sometimes slipping into a rocking Sabbathy groove or quick bursts of Dillenger / Killmen-esque math metal, or letting soaring space rock leads take flight, or drop into scummy, staggering swamp-doom. While these flourishes (which also include some eerie slide guitar sounds, some scathing black metal style shrieks, and druggy psychedelic effects) don't distance their music that far from the rest of the Neurosis/Isis influenced crowd, fans of this sort of crushing metallic math heaviness (a la Celeste, Minsk, Neila, Overmars, Kongh, General Lee, Battlefields, Cult Of Luna, Omega Massif, etc. ) are going to dig Adrift's slightly more oblique sludge battery.