Copse – Mara | Mondrem (Recommendation)

“Too good to stay at home.”

Copse are a newly formed band incubated during the lockdown in 2020. Those dire times were and still are a catalyst for great musical collaborations and works of art to happen. Copse consists of members from All We have (Drummer Ryan Westwood and Guitarist Phil Vernon), Devil sold his Soul (Singer Ed Garrood-Gibbs), Bono on guitars (no, not that one) and Rob Collier on bass complete the line-up.

This EP sounds fantastic. That is one of the first things I noticed about this EP. It is a state of the art Metal production for a Black-Metal release (recorded in the Bandit Studios with Johnny Renshaw, a childhood-friend of the band and also in Devil sold his Soul). It is simple yet genius idea to let Black-Metal sound good and not like a basement-recording.

“I’m found incomplete“
“Mara” is Post-Black-Metal par excellence. Everything I love about this genre is present here: slow build-up, soaring guitars, blasting drums and a great vocal delivery along with it. Who would have thought that Ed would fit so well in a Post-Black-Metal band.

“Nothing ever escapes me”
Taking a more direct route, “Mondrem” is even better than “Mara“. The finale is one of the best things I heard in 2022. Once the last verses are sung, you are left on your own and speechless because of the 20 breathtaking minutes you just witnessed.

You can be beyond excited what Copse will have in store for us. An album is already in the works and judging by the quality of this EP cannot be not awesome. In round about 20 minutes you’ll get the full Post-Black-Metal treatment: melodies, great crescendos and the musical promise that Copse is a force to be reckoned with in the future.

“Too good to stay home“, indeed.