• Pelican – Forever Becoming

    Woah. It’s apparent from the gargantuan opening thuds of ‘Terminal’ that Chicago riffmongers Pelican have undergone some major surgery in the four years since the lacklustre What We All Come to Need limped into earshot. Indeed, it transpires that founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec has flown the nest, to be replaced by The Swan King’s Dallas Thomas. Gone, too, are the grungy guitars, spacier textures and vocal dabblings of the previous record; Pelican 2013 is an angrier beast, pounding the listener with monolithic slabs of guitar abuse, pummelling rhythms and huge bottom end. If all this sounds strangely familiar, it’s because…