White Beast – “Fencewalker”

White Beast are a new Richmond duo who make a grungy, guttural, psychedelic version of sludge-rock on nothing but bass and drums. (Their bandcamp tags include the genre names “post butt rock” and “anarcho buttrock,” both of which are, in my opinion, funny.) Drummer Sam Roberts has played in punk bands like Fried Egg and Private Hell, and I only know about White Beast because he told me about them at a Gorilla Biscuits show on Friday. Singer/bassist Jeffrey Rettberg used to be in the Baltimore band Beachmover, and he released an EP with a different drummer under the White Beast name a couple of years ago.

On Friday, White Beast released “Fencewalker,” their first single as a duo. It’s a heavy, melodic rumination on being told that things in the world are going just fine when things are quite obviously not going just fine. Jeffrey Rettberg shot the song’s video with Caroline Hubert, and he also edited it. In the clip, dolls in a burning house watch the world fall apart on TV. Check it out below.

The self-released “Fencewalker” is available on Bandcamp now, and there’s a White Beast album coming later this year.