All Hail The Yeti – ‘Within The Hollow Earth’ [EP] [Album Review]

Sludge metal crew All Hail The Yeti may live under the bright lights of Los Angeles but, judging by the wailing filth pouring out of their new EP, Within The Hollow Earth, their hearts lie very much with their Southern sludge metal brethren. A gloriously dank seven-track effort, Within The Hollow Earth sounds more like it has been spewed up from the depths of some New Orleans swamp than a few miles from the infamous Hollywood sign.

Wailing into life, “Bury Your Memory” sets the mood early doors with a lumbering, grooving riff, the kind that rears itself grubby head throughout the course of this EP. Wrapped in the pungent stench of the sludge/groove metal scene, All Hail The Yeti shares more in common with Down, Crowbar, Eyehategod and Clutch than they do with any of their Hollywood scenes. Packed with ridiculously infectious grooves, the opener will have your neck muscles loosened up before you know it followed quickly by the dirty metallic stomp of “Headless Valley.”

While the opener was a wonderfully grubby appetizer, “Headless Valley” is storytelling at its finest. A creepy, haunting tale about the secrets of the Nahanni, the so-called “Valley of Headless Men,” this wonderful venture takes the listener into All Hail The Yeti’s world of folklore and creepy campfire tales. Elsewhere “Funeral Heart” is a bleak outpouring capable of providing the soundtrack to the shittest relationship breakups as will the raging grind of “Nidavelir.” The pace picks up for “Cry of the Waheela” with the band reverting back to the steel toe-capped stomp of the earlier tracks before the grooving chug of “The Great Dying” brings this seven-tracker to its end.

Through gravelly vocals, Connor Garrity delivers his tales of superstition, folklore and other similar subject matter while the use of cleaner, almost Ozzy-like wails, only goes to confirm where this band truly belongs. Taking all of those elements, All Hail The Yeti put it all together into one deliciously heavy, sickeningly groovy and wonderfully dark collection of tales.

Within The Hollow Earth Track Listing:

1. Bury Your Memory
2. Headless Valley
3. Funeral Heart
4. Nidavelir
5. Cold Dead Leaves
6. Cry of the Waheela
7. The Great Dying

Run Time: 28:04
Release Date: November 12, 2021
Record Label: minusHEAD Records