Sludge metal has always been a genre of scars – riffs forged in hardship, tempos sinking under the weight of their own despair, and an unfiltered honesty that leaves no room for pretense. Bronco’s self-titled debut embodies this ethos with a sound that is as gnarled and unrelenting as the North Carolina earth from which it was born.
The band’s roots stretch deep into the thick swamp of Southern sludge, bearing the weight of Toke’s legacy while refusing to be shackled by it. The untimely accident that left guitarist Tim Bryan incapacitated marked an abrupt and painful end to Toke’s run, but out of that loss, vocalist/bassist Bronco and drummer JP pressed forward, channeling grief into something new. With the addition of guitarist Vic, the newly christened Bronco has carved out a sonic landscape that honors its past while driving headlong into the storm of its future.
Bronco is a record of punishment and perseverance. It moves like a beast that refuses to be broken – its riffs slow, deliberate, and seething with malice. The album lurches forward with the suffocating weight of Weedeater’s Southern-fried nihilism, the crust-caked hostility of Eyehategod, and the caustic unease of Indian, all while embracing the down-tuned, THC-drenched stomp of Bongzilla. Yet Bronco doesn’t settle for mere mimicry; there’s a distinct hunger here, a restlessness that keeps these songs from sinking into the genre’s most predictable bogs.
Thick, speaker-blowing distortion forms the backbone of this record, with Vic’s guitar tone dragging its nails across every second of its runtime. Riffs don’t just lumber – they howl, grind, and buckle under their own weight. Bronco’s bass tone is a world unto itself, a subterranean force that gnaws at the lowest frequencies, while his vocals alternate between whiskey-burned shouts and something more tormented, like a man wrestling with his own demons in real time. JP’s drumming is less a foundation and more a battering ram, shifting between suffocating restraint and primal explosions of aggression.
Lyrically, Bronco feels like a record written from a place of grim acceptance. This isn’t the rebellion of youth or the kind of doom that finds beauty in sorrow – this is a soundtrack for long nights spent staring into the abyss, for the moment when the fight is gone and all that remains is the weight of the years behind you. And yet, there’s no surrender here, only endurance. If there’s catharsis to be found, it’s in the sheer physicality of the sound, in the way the band embraces the ugliness of existence and wields it like a hammer.
Unlike many sludge and doom debuts that revel in their own excess, Bronco never feels bloated or self-indulgent. The pacing is methodical but never stagnant, and the production is raw without slipping into amateurish murk. Every note feels intentional, every moment a carefully placed wound.
Sludge and doom have long thrived on hardship, but few records in recent memory have sounded so convincingly lived-in. Bronco is an album that feels heavy, in a way that goes beyond volume or tuning. It’s the weight of loss, the ache of persistence, the sound of a band who has been through hell and come out the other side, not unscathed, but unbroken.
For those who find solace in the crushing, the caustic, and the uncompromising, Bronco is essential listening.
Follow Bronco on Instagram
Released by Magnetic Eye Records on February 28th, 2025
