With the mornings getting colder and colder, it seems only fitting that Lower should fly onto my radar. The Copenhagen quartet beats a dreary drum and projects their intensity through their restraint. “Someone’s…” starts off the 7″ with a screech, then falls into a steady bluesy dirge: the backing guitar shreds waves of tense chords while the overdriven bass trudges along like a weary traveler. The clipped march-like drums perfectly mirror that, and the vocals shine with their breathy wails. “But…” opens with a ringing bell (some Zen thing?) and falls into a similar step, clocks another bluesy 6/8 march that slowly drips into down-tempo 4/4. The guitars get even washier while the vocals fray into full-out screams, until that ringing bell returns to usher out the band. Lower is distributed in the US on 540 Records – grab a copy of this wretchedly good 7″ here and dig into these world-weary downer jams.