Easily Sugar Horse‘s best-written album. Emotionally rich and structured brilliantly. Unfortunately, it’s also buried in the worst sound of their discography.
Release date: April 10, 2026 | Fat Dracula Records | Bandcamp | Instagram | Linktree
Since Sugar Horse exploded onto the scene with their genuinely unique take on the post-metal/sludge/doom scene in 2019, they’ve continued to win people over. Since then, they’ve continued to refine and hone in on the sound that keeps punters coming back, yet never producing generic, samey records. There’s always tons of experimentation, and their time on Pelagic Records produced some really nuts EPs where they really let loose with experimental metal. Not A Sound In Heaven carries on that mantra of experimentation, but also structures the album more cohesively and, dare I say, more maturely, so you want to listen to it from start to finish. In some albums & EPs, there are huge changes in sound and pace that do take you out of the album a little, or they are front-loaded with the best tracks. In this record, I’m still struggling to pick a favourite after four weeks with the album.
Addressing the elephant in the room before carrying on, my auditory relationship with this album hasn’t been the greatest. Without being a massive arsehole about it, I don’t believe that proper test runs were completed before shipping the album. I run six different tests on a variety of systems. PC with monitors, 5.1 setup, over-ear headphones, in-ear headphones, portable speaker, and my car. I’m no audiophile, but I know what atmosphere is, and for whatever reason, it only shows up when you listen to the album on the monitors. Every other option, I had to adjust my EQ, bass & treble to get some kind of depth and feeling to the mix. This is an EQ I’ve used for four years, with my Sugar Horse listens clocking in at ~700 plays according to my tracker. In the car, I had to switch the album off completely as there was severe auditory distortion on tracks two and three. My wagon has great speakers that handle nastier music being played much louder. You know when you’re taking off in a plane, listening to music, and it gets all airy and crackly in your ears as the pressure changes? Whilst you’d usually swallow to equalise that pressure and get full hearing back, Not A Sound In Heaven is a hard mix to force down your throat.
Yet Sugar Horse is a band who tag their own album ‘terrible’ on their Bandcamp, so is this just on brand for them? Is it a stylistic choice to have some of the guitar work sound like it was recorded on a tape deck hooked to a 2009 phone microphone? Fuck knows! Back to the music.
The opening track is a really industrial-feeling song that blends Sugar Horse‘s raw, sludgy sound with their trademark ambient wash noise, a sound I still feel at its core is very British indie, almost like The Killers soaked in ketamine nightmares. The vocals are really poignant and relevant in the current climate; you can really feel the exasperation and power behind Ashley Tubb’s lyrics. It’s a storming opener with an outro that perfectly leads into “Secret Speech”. A track that plays with contrast beautifully, dipping in and out of cataclysmic riffs, supplemented by Tubb’s ballads, it is easily one of the best tracks to show to new punters, so they can really get a taste of Sugar Horse‘s soundscape. Of course, on the right speakers…
“Ex-Human Shield” is the noisiest song on the album. Crunchy riffs open and form the foundation of the track, with savage vocal shrieks and thundering drums making up the meat of it. Cleverly interspersed are moments of shimmer reverb and that k-hole indie, before the devastating riffs come back and rip you back to reality.
The succinct first three tracks, which tear you from pillar to post, are really well balanced by the droney “History’s Biggest T-Shirts”, a ten-minute beauty that crosses genres effortlessly. Whilst starting with a sludgey furore crossed with art rock, it soon melts into an amazing noisy ambient wash, which you can completely soak into. Cleverly pulling you out of the haze later in the track to return to jarring sludge, it’s a track you’ll want to revisit over and again.
The title track has Tubb go ham on a classic Sugar Horse ballad, and the band pull off the instrumentation brilliantly. Placed really well within the heart of the album, it’s a nice contrast to the previous four intense tracks. “Company Town” is much the same as the first three tracks, but it does close on an excellent high. Completing the record is another smorgasbord of sound from the band, starting with some dark trip-hop before going full sludge again, with a huge atmosphere surrounding the climax of the track.
Not A Sound In Heaven plays front to back so well, but also has a bunch of tracks you can just throw on if you’re in a certain mood. Lyrically rich, taking on the bullshit governments, wars, and suffering in the world, it’s thematically spot on in this grim reality we live in. I think this is definitely their best-written and played record, which will have your head banging and your heartstrings pulled, all at once. I just hope the sound issue is isolated to me, and it sounds better to others on their devices.
