Exclusive Premiere: Sydbarret, “Soul Digger”

This past summer, the editors of MetalSucks hand-picked ten unsigned bands from an open application process to record at Converse Rubber Tracks — Converse’s completely free, state-of-the-art recording studio — in either Brooklyn, NY with producer Will Putney (The Acacia Strain, Suicide Silence, Exhumed), or Boston, MA, with producer Kurt Ballou (Converge, High on Fire, Torche). In the weeks leading up to the recording sessions, we previewed each band, and in the coming weeks we’ll be premiering the finished tracks from all ten! Today, we feature Sydbarret from New Jersey.

Isn’t it nice when a band takes your expectations and completely exceeds them? Not that we didn’t expect an excellent track from Sydbarret’s collaboration with producer Will Putney at CRT Brooklyn; it’s just that if they delivered something on par with 2011’s The Swimmer we would’ve been perfectly satisfied.

Instead they met our expectations and smashed right through them. Not only is “Soul Digger” an excellent track in its own right, but it takes the band’s already solid base of post-hardcore and proggisms abound and ups it about three levels. “Soul Digger” still sounds like the same Sydbarret we chose for this year’s CRTxMetalSucks sessions, just even better: tighter, more focused, pushing their own boundaries and, yes, heavier. Best of all, it feels like a perfectly natural evolution; nothing feels forced, and Putney did a fantastic job capturing the tones and making them hit as hard as possible.

Check it out below and see what you think.