Mean Green |Castle |Independent

Mean Green is a power trio from Boone, North Carolina, formed in 2022 in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Jake Helms handles guitar and vocals and James Matthews plays drums. Alex Wierback played bass on this album, while Cole Franklin now fills the bass spot in the lineup. The band put out a self titled debut in 2023 and spent the years since on the road, sharing stages with Freedom Hawk, Telekinetic Yeti, 20 Watt Tombstone and Faerie Ring. "Castle" is the second full length, self-released on digital and vinyl.

"Castle" spends its seven tracks working with slow sludge riffs, stoner grooves and classic rock guitar ideas, with the production giving the bass and guitar a large, dirty presence. The title track opens with a crawling riff, while "Sludge Puppy" brings more movement through its changing guitar figures and rough vocal delivery. "Employee Of The Month" stretches the formula across more than six minutes, using repeated riff cycles and psychedelic guitar touches before "Wild Bill" brings a more compact arrangement. "Slack Jaw" and "Cyclone" continue the album's heavy blues influence, while "Wasteland" closes the main sequence with its slower psychedelic atmosphere and gravelled vocals.

The lyrics move between dark imagery, absurd humor and Southern storytelling, giving the album a personality that matches its musical approach. The main limitation is that several tracks rely heavily on similar tempos and riff patterns, which makes the second half less varied than the opening material. The result is a straightforward sludge, stoner and doom album with enough musical substance to make its roughly thirty five minute length worthwhile, though the songwriting could use more variation.

|7.0