Sludge and doom are no strangers to glacial pacing. The songs are usually so molten and tar-like that they have to ooze slowly out of the speakers to the listeners. As such there’s no shortage of full-lengths with only six tracks.

But what makes Harbinger, the third overall release from Miami metal outfit BLEETH, unique is that most six-track sludge metal albums last a little longer than eighteen minutes.

Don’t make the mistake of confusing its brevity with a lack of heft though. There are still plenty of heavier-than-heavy riffs to crush your ribcage. But BLEETH prunes the more indulgent tropes of the genre in favor of punk’s economical runtimes (the longest song is 3:39, and the shortest is 1:41). In doing so they may have revealed that no one needed to stretching tracks out to nine minutes anyway.

Harbinger packs just as much fire and heft into its eighteen minutes as many bands have in an hour, without being so needy for the listener’s time. And in an era of fifteen second TikToks and 240 character tweets, it’s just as effective as if it were twice as long.

The sonic palette is similarly economical: detuned guitars rattle through distorted amps alongside earth-shattering bass guitar and simple-but-punishing drum figures. Vocals are shared between bassist Ryan Rivas, who delivers a throaty growl and guitarist Lauren Parma who shifts between chantlike clean melodies and Kim Gordon-esque shouts. They deliver ruminations on authoritarianism, technology, and religion while drummer Juan Londaño deftly shifts meter to match the mood. All of this is delivered with few overdubs, if any.

The result is an album that is impressive and effective, not despite its brevity but maybe because of it. It feels almost like a guerrilla performance: I can almost imagine the band quickly setting up their gear in the middle of a public square, playing through these songs, and taking off before the cops show up to shut it down. It’s brutal, engaging, and memorable. And if you have that, who needs a longer run time?

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