Sledges
Losing Pace EP
Quiet Panic
Gaining momentum, rather than Losing Pace, San Diego juggernaut Sledges enters the metallic shoegazer and grungy, post-hardcore sweepstakes – a growing field, indeed – with a supremely heavy four-song EP that gallops toward an unchartered oblivion across vast celestial fields. Back on earth, though, the ship’s pilot, singer/songwriter Philly Gomez, works remotely, grounded in meditations on losing one’s way and the process of recovery.
While recalibrating, Gomez and Sledges, formed during the uncertain ennui of the pandemic, birthed Losing Pace in 2023 with Mike Kamoo, who weaved his recording magic at Earthling Studios, which – given its moniker – sounds like a good place to begin talking about the spacey, churning epic they’ve created. Doors blown open by a steady diet of massive guitar riffs, atmospheric effects, swarming rhythms, and dramatic dynamics that feeds the soul, it’s where they grappled with emotional turbulence and sighed loudly when peace arrived after the storms.
Cold and cavernous, the title track scales great alternative-metal heights, climbing to wear only eagles and The Deftones dare, while a thick and astral “Weightless” launches and picks up speed, racing to a strummed, dreamy bridge before the blazing comet they’ve caught by the tail breaks apart spectacularly. With the atmospheric heave of “Stumbling as I Fall,” coming as it does in tidal waves, Sledges gradually shifts its heaven- and earth-moving machinery to dig its interplanetary way to The Catherine Wheel’s “Black Metallic” and get baptized in its all-consuming, dark flood. That sense of overwhelming, crushing beauty practically swamps a sprawling “June is Better Than July,” a bulldozer of a track with a gripping ascent and otherworldly vocals.
For all its monolithic might, it’s the heady, majestic melodies of Losing Pace that awe and captivate, but the youthful Sledges also display a mastery of the nuances and classic source material – think Hum, Quicksand, My Bloody Valentine, etc. – of genres that inspire them. Even if they’re trespassing on familiar territory, Sledges is testing boundaries, the two bonus tracks available with pre-orders – a glassy, blurred, swerving “Letters” and a careening “Fading” – relying less on amplified power and more on aural experimentation. If you’d prefer an astronaut eager to establish its own mystique, meet Sledges.
