The Alchemical Mixture - llord & Lord Summerisle (album reviews)

Lord Summerisle - Demo

From: Barcelona, Spain.  Highlights include: "Pare Huarg" and

"Ocellót".  Rating: 4.5/5.  Release Date: January 7, 2013.

A couple months ago I wrote a review for an amazing multi-media project by the band Midnight Zombie Alligator called 'Nova Sico' (go ahead and check it out).  It's an incredible mix of stoner doom and sludge with film soundtrack elements about a zombie apocalypse and one man's journey to find a cure.  The band combined audio with visual and written elements to create an overwhelmingly successful project.  A short while later I wrote a review of a three song demo by progressive trio Lord Summerisle for Stoner Hive (read it here).  It turns David Trillo who provides guitar and vocals for MZA does the same for Lord Summerisle as well.  I had no idea!  But that's not even the end of it, not content to freak the world out in those two bands alone, he and Mike Kelly, drummer for Lord Summerisle, form a third, decidedly more brutal combo with Aris on bass called llord!  These three bands couldn't possibly be more different from each other and I'm proud to feature the two lords here on Paranoid Hitsophrenic!

Lord Summerisle (named after a Christopher "Sabbath fan extraordinaire" Lee character from one of my personal favorite movies of all time, the original Wicker Man [1973]), thy middle name is Prog (an awkward and perhaps pretentious middle name, I know, but the musical genre itself is known for nothing if not pushing the boundaries of good taste).  Kudos to this band for not only delivering an authentic slice of pure seventies progressive rock, both in terms of structure and rhythmic sensibilities, but also crafting one of the catchiest songs of the year while doing so.  "Pare Huarg" is certainly the catchiest instrumental of the year to date.  As a matter of fact, 'pure seventies' doesn't even cut it as this thing can go twelve rounds with anything by King Crimson, Gabriel-led Genesis and oh, let's say E.L.P. et al. in terms of rhythmic complexity.  Lord Summerisle hops right over the top and stalks confidently into the rhythmic minefield of Zappa territory, joined perhaps on the front lines by burly Captain Beefheart.  Got it!?!  This thing is crazy!

We don't hear vocals until a few minutes into track two "1864" which throws a wet blanket on the prog fire the band started in the instrumental opener.  But such a wet blanket of normalcy can only serve to dampen relatively little of the fire damaged areas, this being a raging inferno of prog after all.  Guitar effects, continued rhythmic explorations / experimentations and a damn hell ass crazy structure keep this hard driving number strictly in the wheelhouse of latter day prog.  However, concessions to a more typical song must be made when dealing with vocals.  "Ocellót" gets this spaceship off the ground and zipping across the universe with its warp drive space rock tempo and octave shifts during the verse.  All together, Lord Summerisle's three song demo is sure to please anybody with a hankering for classic hard rock, specifically of the prog / space rock strains.

I mean that, really.

It is sure to.

Hopefully, this is no flash in the pan, but a project which will deliver on the promise of this rather musically accomplished demo.  A full-length album of this kind of material may draw the attention of Ming the Merciless and have these three musicians hunted down and killed for threatening the tyrant's galactic empire.  That's the kind of high powered Space Rockin' Prog I'm talking about.  And of course, if that were to happen, the world would be without two thirds of our next group, llord ...

After a long, hard day doing math at the prog factory, it must be kind of nice for David and Mike to open up their switchblades and just start cutting up swathes of heavy grooves.  That's not to say that llord doesn't feature some of the same progressive sentiments that define MZA and Lord Summerisle, it's just not nearly at such a titanic scale.  Where the rhythms rarely pause for a breath while herking and jerking throughout whole compositions on Lord Summerisle's debut, never giving poor Mike Kelly a moment to relax, llord play things relatively straight.  Trillo's hacksaw riffs are utilitarian and industrious.  In comparison to Summerisle, llord is sloping brow music that tosses the switchblade over the shoulder in confused frustration and simply cuts into a groove with a dull homemade shiv of mouth-breathing and ill-tempered riffs.  Trillo's throaty death metal screaming tells the listener that there is no bargaining here with this madman.

llord - Demo

From: Barcelona, Spain.  Highlights include: "Verro" and

"Iron Pescatore".  Rating: 4/5.  Release Date: January 31, 2013.

Interestingly (typically?), each of the three songs on llord's demo increases in compositional complexity, one after the other.  From the 4 minute opener "Iron Pescatore" which features a fairly orthodox metal song structure, even while the musical style borrows bits and pieces from various sources all at once, to the six minute follow up "Ordell" which begins to rely a bit more heavily on some syncopation to the 10 minute closer which opens like a spilled box near the middle of the track, unleashing a horde of tritone horrors, the complexity is increased before taking over the end of "Verro" entirely with a madcap finish.

David Trillo has a real knack for penning riffs that get caught in my head.  "Pare Huarg" and "Corpus Earthling" from MZA have been known to be on non-stop rotation in my noggin all night long, he's got riffs and bands for every mood.  Check them all out.  All three are up for "pay what you want" download on bandcamp!  Click the links on the players below to be swept along to the bandcamp pages.

Cathedral - The Last Spire (album review)

Before we even begin, I'm going to pre-emptively let the reader in on a little secret: I do not have as exhaustive a knowledge and/or deep and mystic an understanding of Cathedral's back catalogue as others do.  I have their first album 'Forest of Equilibrium' on CD with the 'Soul Sacrifice' EP and a bonus DVD which was a major score for something like 10 bucks down at ye ole Scrape Records.  Anyway, since then I've downloaded and listened to 'The Ethereal Mirror', 'The Carnival Bizarre' and Paul Chain's brilliant 'Alkahest' album, on which Lee Dorrian sings vocals.  What you won't be getting here with this review is an expert's context, where this album fits in to the band's recorded legacy, nor any of that nonsense.  So, what with this being a final album, if Cathedral makes reference either musically or lyrically to their past works on this album, it will fly right over my head.  This album will be judged solely on its own merits, as it should be.  Right, so let's begin then ...

Oh, before we begin the beginning ... this should come as no real surprise but Cathedral and their album 'Forest of Equilibrium' were one of the first doom metal bands and albums that I discovered.  In fact I was so new to it, I didn't even realize that it was considered doom metal.  I wasn't even looking for doom, per se, when I found them.  I found them on Decibel magazine's Hall of Fame records thing, I listened to a track on youtube and went down to Scrape and picked it up, and though it took a while for the record to grow on me, I've been a fan ever since.

Okay, time for some truth now.  What I'm doing is avoiding the issue of actually getting down to reviewing this thing.  I don't want to do it really.  This being their acknowledged swansong, there's too much finality to it all, it's so hard to let go.  It's a fact that looms over the record thematically as well.  The ambient, crow cawing intro "Entrance To Hell" is a bell-ringing call to "Bring out yer dead!" and leads into the 11 and a half minute "Pallbearer" (there's that death theme).  Most noticeable of all are some of the lyrics which are well worth looking into:  "Living in the shadow / of the damned Cathedral" jumps out at you as do the lyrics of the lead single "Tower of Silence".  If one wanted to read into them, the lyrics would certainly appear to tell the story of a conflicted Lee Dorrian who on the one hand is happy to shuck the carapace of the band he has made an institution while at the same time suffering some doubt and anxiety about doing so.

One gets the feeling however, that Dorrian and co. have moved on creatively from most of what Cathedral represents.  One of the band's most signature techniques, that being Dorrian's sing-songy vocal style so familiar and prominent on the earlier albums, makes but brief appearances on "Pallbearer" and "Infestation of Grey Death" and is largely muzzled.  But the riffs are there, the vibe is there for one last blaze and the effort is genuine.  At the end of the day, it's a good job that they didn't just phone the effort in, because knowing this to be the last album, the feeling is that fans might have been happy with a 40 minute album but they went full bore and gave the listener a full 56 minute farewell.

Photo by Ester Segarra.

The morbidity expressed on this record begins to play out like a ritual by the midway point of "An Observation".  It plays out like a ritual in the sense that a funeral is a ritual that is meant to ease the suffering of survivors by "letting the deceased depart".  That's what this album is like.  That anxiety and doubt expressed in some of the lyrics aren't the band's doubt and anxiety.  It's yours.  It's the listener's.  Cathedral do a masterful job here of exhaling all that is left of the potent smoke of inspiration while easing long-time fans out of their high.  Most bands just break-up and are either never heard from again or re-form 20 years later and the vibe is never the same.  Cathedral go more than half the distance for their fans and for that alone they should be lauded endlessly.  This album allows the band to go out on their own terms.  How many bands can say that?

Some twenty plus years ago Cathedral created a monolith.  Without a doubt Cathedral is one of the most influential bands in the Doom Metal genre (just look at and listen to Electric Wizard's first album, then see what they went on to do) and their legacy was secure long before work even began on this album.  Will 'The Last Spire' add to this legacy and win the band legions of new fans?  It hardly matters.  As an exclamation point on a long and varied career it's no slam dunk perhaps, but it allows the venerated band to go out with dignity and is well worth a listen.  With such new wave bands as Witchsorrow, Moss and Alunah patrolling the British shores, the UK stoner / doom / sludge scene is in excellent hands, and it's all thanks to this band, who now turn it over to them to inspire the next generation of doomed and sludgy stoners.

Highlights include: "Infestation of Grey Death" and "Tower of Silence"

Rating: 4/5


Tracklist:
1). Entrance To Hell (3:07)
2). Pallbearer (11:38)
3). Cathedral of the Damned (5:48)
4). Tower of Silence (6:53)
5). Infestation of Grey Death (9:02)
6). An Observation (10:19)
7). The Last Laugh (0:38)
8). This Body, Thy Tomb (8:47)
Total Run Time: 56:10

From: Coventry, England

Genre: Doom

Reminds me of: Alunah, Electric Wizard, Moss, Witchsorrow and every other band in the doom subgenre that has come since them

Release Date: April 30, 2013

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Weep, cry and mourn or smile.

Better Review:
Doommantia
Dr. Doom's Lair

Cathedral facebook

GET IT HERE

Banda de la Muerte - Seis Canciones (album review)

Banda de la Muerte, maybe the best band out of Argentina, are back with their brand new six-song covers EP, appropriately titled, 'Seis Canciones' (Six Songs).  More to the point, this is a collection of six covers of underground Argentinian rock songs from the seventies and unless you, dear reader, were born, raised and steeped in the Argentinian rock n roll scene there's a good chance that these old songs aren't so dusty as they would seem and are at least as new to you as they are to me.  It's a good place to build upon the momentum of last year's 'Pulso de una mente maldita', which garnered a lot of (well-deserved) attention, while earning some respect among the ignorant for their nation's musical forebears.  As of this moment they are right in the middle of a European tour which has seen the band go from Germany to Belgium to The Nertherlands, Fance and Spain.  The tour will be capped by the band's appearance at the Freak Valley Festival in Germany at the end of this month.

Banda de la Muerte are a stoner band with a palpable punk influence.  They like to play fast, heavy, lean and mean, but what of the band's other influences?  Before we begin, let's track down and source the original songs in order (with links), shall we?

1. "Abelardo el Pollo" originally by Pappo's Blues from 'Pappo's Blues Volumen 4' (1973)
2. "Las imágenes que ves entre las nubes" by Miguel Cantilo y Grupo Sur from 'Miguel Cantilo y Grupo Sur' (1975)
3. "Niño del tercer milenio" by Orion's Beethoven from 'Tercer Milenio' (1977)
4. "Era de tontos" by Luis Alberto Spinetta from 'Spinettalandia y sus amigos' (1971)
5. "La sarna del viento" by Contraluz from 'Americanos' (1973)
6. "Reunidos en el cuarto" by Sacremento from 'Sacremento' (1972)

Well, that truly was fun and informative.  Great music all around.  And after following the links on the song names and hearing the originals, you begin to understand that Banda de la Muerte have made themselves the inheritors of a fine and proud tradition, and you begin to realize how daunting a task interpreting these 'Seis Canciones' really is.

As for seventies atmosphere, Banda de la Muerte doesn't even attempt to go there, choosing instead to update these terrific songs with some modern production and techniques.  To take a handful of prog rock obscurities and metallize, let alone modernize them in such a way is no easy feat, but the Argentinian upstarts do just that with great success and they must be payed with the ultimate respect and recognition for this feat: they make the songs their own.

For the most part this EP is uptempo, doubling the BPMs and halving the runtimes while rasping with attitude through the vocal melodies of the originals, these guys aren't intimidated by the task at hand and aren't so reverent of the source material that they don't take chances.  Of the six tracks, the finale "Reunidos en el Cuarto" sounds the most faithful to the original, in fact, if one didn't know this was a covers album, they might be a little shocked by the sound of this song.  This is to their credit.

In all, they haven't fumbled the ball here, recording a collection of tracks that the original musicians would be proud of.  Banda de la Muerte have done this by breathing new life into these songs and revealing these compositions for what they really are: living, breathing, vital and infinite.  Just because a song is old doesn't mean it's dead.  It's the next generation that filters it through their own eyes, ears and experiences, re-interpreting it in a way that only they can.  The music lives on and the songs remain 'new' for all time, not only to the uninitiated but also due to the efforts of those who would take up the mantle and make it their own.

Imagine going back to ancient Rome and hearing a familiar melody wafting through the air outside of the Colosseum.  Musically, the melody would most likely be surrounded and accompanied by unfamiliar sounds and rhythms.  It would almost be recognizable, except for that one obvious melody.  This is the way in which music can be infinite.  Music is malleable and Banda de la Muerte have taken some of their own beloved songs and fashioned them into something new again.  One can only imagine what a covers album of this covers album would sound like 40 years from now.  For it to be a real tribute, these future musicians would have to tailor the songs to suit their own experiences.  That would be the ultimate tribute.

Highlights include: "Niño del tercer milenio" and "La sarna del viento"

Rating: 4/5

Total Run Time: 22:12

From: Beunos Aires, Argentina

Genre: Psychedelic, Stoner

Reminds me of: Los Dragula, Los Natas, Paissano

Release Date: April 3, 2013

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Folding the bathroom mirrors inwardly to get that sense of the infinite.

Banda de la Muerte facebook

**Special thanks to Vania at LSW Promotions.

Hour of Power 05/18/13 (playlist)

1. Bruce Lee (Indian Handcrafts / Civil Disobedience For Losers) 2012
2. Electric Mistress [edit] (Stoned Jesus / Seven Thunders Roar) 2012
3. Keep Your Eyes Peeled (Queens of the Stone Age / ... Like Clockwork) 2013
4. Liquid Gold [live] (Steak / Corned Beef Colossus EP) 2013
5. Foehammer [live] (Conan / TBA) 2013
6. In The Company of Serpents 'Of the Flock' album teaser 2013
7. Eyes of Zamiel (Demon Lung / The Hundredth Name) 2013
8. Blood Temple Hymn (Egypt / Cyclopean Riffs) 2013
9. Nuclear Messiah (King Goat / Atom) 2013
10. By Titan Hand (Head of the Demon / ST) 2013
11. Running On Fumes (Lowburn / Soaring High EP) 2013
12. Green Machine (Kyuss / Blues for the Red Sun) 1992 'classic video'

Doom Charts for 05/18/13

Top 25 Songs

#). Song Title (artist/album)

1. Polygon of Eyes (Scorpion Child / ST)
2. Widow Stone (Sonic Mass / single)
3. Savage Dancer (Black Moth / 7" single)
4. Stone (Alice in Chains / The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here)
5. Crux To Bear (Across Tundras / Split LP w/ Lark's Tongue)
6. Highflyer (Eternal Elysium / Highflyer EP)
7. Nuclear Messiah (King Goat / Atom)
8. Shadow King (Beastwars / Blood Becomes Fire)
9. Dancing With My Demons (Chains / 7" single)
10. Chrononaut (Crag Dweller / Magic Dust)
11. Dull Ache [I Hate Myself Today] (Tentacle / Ingot Eye)
12. For the Throne of Fire (Kröwnn / Hyborian Age)
13. One of a Kind (Nocturnal / single)*
14. Leaning on a Bear (Purson / The Circle & The Blue Door)
15. Keyhole / Inner Saturn (Shinin' Shade / Sat-Urn)
16. Lunar Master (Mothership / ST)*
17. Vertigo (Zodiac / ST)*
18. Cryogenics (Utah / ST)
19. Kärsimyksen tie (Musta Risti / ST)
20. Purple Void (Spacefog / Purple Void)
21. Yorgan Mountain (Green Shade / ... Bright Interlude)
22. ... And Death Rides With Us (Temptations Wings / Legends of the Tusk)*
23. Solution (Supermachine / ST)
24. Holy Planet Yamoth (Necronomicon / The Queen of Death)
25. Silverwing (Sideburn / IV Monument)

* New Song

Outgoing songs:
Sinister Gleams (Abysmal Grief / Feretri)
Tower of Silence (Cathedral / The Last Spire)
Death March (The Gates of Slumber / Stormcrow)
Money Shot (Early Mammal / Horror at Pleasure)

Top 30 Albums
#). artist - album title

1. Blizaro - Blak Majicians
2. Kröwnn - Hyborian Age
3. Black Pyramid - Adversarial
4. Tentacle - Ingot Eye
5. Devil To Pay - Fate Is Your Muse
6. Beastwars - Blood Becomes Fire
7. Head of the Demon - ST
8. Cultura Tres - Rezando Al Miedo
9. Revelation - Inner Harbor
10. Devil - Gather The Sinners
11. Weed Priest - ST
12. Crag Dweller - Magic Dust
13. Mothership - ST
14. Shinin' Shade - SAT-URN
15. Grave Disgrace - Triumphant & Militant Church
16. Cardinals Folly - Strange Conflicts of the Past
17. Demon Lung - The Hundredth Name
18. Tsar Bomba - Silent Queen
19. Sideburn - IV Monument
20. Kadavar - Abra Kadavar*
21. Zodiac - ST
22. Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Mind Control*
23. Gates of Slumber - Stormcrow EP
24. Geezer - Gage EP
25. Demon Eye - E.P.*
26. Grey Host - Dawn For Vultures*
27. Magister Templi - Lucifer Leviathan Logos*
28. March The Desert - ST
29. Lowburn - Soaring High EP*
30. Green Shade - ... Bright Interlude

• Last Chart
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High Priest of Saturn - ST (album review)

Cover image by Espen Solheim.

This was one of my most highly anticipated and eagerly awaited albums of this year.  "The Protean Towers" has been melting the paranoid speakers for almost a year now as it came, along with "Crawling King Snake" (which isn't a John Lee Hooker cover by the way) from the band's two song '2011 Demo'.  I found it either on youtube or a bandcamp tag search, but either way it was the cover art that drew me to it.  The art combined with the band name, the overall quality of the songs, the beautiful vocals of Merethe Heggset and the length of the compositions (both hang out around the 10 minute mark), created an aura, a mystique about the band that had me drooling for more.  When I found out they were signed to Svart Records and would release their full-length, self-titled debut through that label, I knew they would deliver.

First thing's first, some stats for you.  The album contains but four tracks of nearly equal length around the 10,9,9 and 12 minute marks.  Only two of these tracks are 'new', i.e. not found on the demo, they are "Kraken Mare" and "On Mayda Insula" and make up the lion's share of the record.  The two cuts we heard on the demo?  They have been re-recorded for this release, of course.  So let us begin.

"The Protean Towers" is now fully fleshed out and realized due to a superior recording that brings the depth and fullness of the band's sound to the fore.  The song is predicated by a classic tritone doom riff, the kind that never gets old no matter how many repetitions the band moves through.  That's the way in which we get to such long compositions on this album, slow tempos and fearless repetition, as opposed to lengthening tracks via flights of progressive fancy.  Another huge hallmark of the demo version of the song was the organ, which was the real hook of the song.  The organ lends this thing a late sixties vibe which creates a Manson family kind of atmosphere.  Something in the swirling tones of the organ makes me think of penetrating stares from some wild eyed woman.  Merethe sings in an understated baritone, which only serves to reinforce this image in my mind.  The organ isn't as crisp or out-front in the mix on this newly recorded version as it was on the demo and for that reason it's darker in tone, not only the organ but the song altogether.  Even after all this time, it's still a great song.

"Kraken Mare" is next and it's our first taste of something truly new from this band since their demo nearly two years ago.  Occult feelings once again resound with the slow revving riffs, organ and tom tom explorations and haunting vocals.  Again they are a major focal point, Merethe's emotionally distant delivery ingraining itself on a deep seated area of the brain.  Though we're only half way through the album, let me just tell you that the entire four song, 41 minute album is a pressure cooker of slow riffs, with performances that are as detached as ghosts are from corpses, relentlessly churning riffs which are forced to relive tragedies in a seemingly endless cycle.  Of course, there can be a kind of awe in tragedy and thankfully, the High Priest blesses their audience with such a hook.

We've heard "Crawling King Snake" before too, but again, the sound here is all together thicker, fuller, deeper with more prominent organ.  There was a subtlety to the original version, but what's lost in that regard is made up for in the altogether superior recording which emphasizes the dynamics and interplay of the instruments.  The organ retains the flavor of subtlety too with its slow build up to a killer swell of dissonance during the refrain.  No matter what way you slice it, it's a superior version of an already five star song.

So, just in case you haven't got it til now, this band has carved out an identity for itself (see above).  They're not about to rock the boat on their big finale by changing tempos or tones.  If anything, this (second of two) newly unveiled track only turns everything the band has been doing up to this point up to 11.  The riffs are slower, the organ ever more subtle, the quality of warmth in the vocals shrinking and disappearing in a vanishing point of pitilessness.

High Priest of Saturn can walk you to the funeral home and dirge you into the ground all day long.  The only question is, is this what you want?  Because if you're looking for anything other than slow to midtempo occult doom rock you won't find it on this album.  This album is strictly for the people who use skulls for candle holders and skeletons for coat racks.  That doesn't mean however, that High Priest of Saturn can't do their part to win a few new converts to the genre, I reckon the video below will rope a few in all by itself.

Highlights include: "The Protean Towers" and "Kraken Mare"

Rating: 4/5



Tracklist:
1). The Protean Tower (10:32)
2). Kraken Mare (9:08)
3). Crawling King Snake (9:03)
4). On Mayda Insula (12:49)
Total Run Time: 41:31

Merethe Heggset: Bass Guitar / Vocals
Martin Sivertsen: Guitar
Andreas Hagen: Guitar and Drums

Keyboards played by Ole Kristian Majmedal

From: Trondheim, Norway

Genre: Doom, Psychedelic

Reminds me of: Albino Python, Witchsorrow

Release Date: March 22, 2013

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Spend a candle lit night with Baph-Omet, you know just a nice quiet night, nesting ...

Better Review:
Temple of Perdition
Wicked Channel
Sputnik Music

High Priest of Saturn facebook

GET IT HERE / or LP

OR HERE (digital)

The Alchemical Mixture - Church of Void & King Goat (album reviews)

Church of Void - Winter Is Coming EP

From: Jyväskylä, Finland.  Highlights include: "Winter Is Coming"
and "Summerland".  Rating: 5/5.  Release Date: August 24, 2012.

Finns always put a little bit of extra muscle and oomph into their doom metal.  It's because of this that my impression of Finns is of burly, bearded and stout men who fear nothing and charge into every place and/or situation head first, taking every step in life with the most vigorous stride possible if for no other reason than to stay warm.  I've never been to Finland.  I get the feeling very few people have really, for various reasons.  One of those reasons would have to be the harsh cold climate.  The northernmost part of the country lies within the arctic circle, which contains roughly a third of its land mass.  We're talking about a place where it's warm for about two or three months of the year.  Warm being a relative term here.  The average temperature in the Helsinki is below freezing a whopping four months of the year.  So it should come as no surprise that a relatively new doom metal band from that country should name their debut EP 'Winter is Coming'.  What the hell is doomier, gloomier and more frightening than that?  What could be worse?

The raging tempest this band puts forth in it's thunderous clamor does nothing to diminish Finland's reputation for birthing men of weather-battled burl and survivalist vigor.  Church of Void washes in from the New Wave of Traditional Doom, a genre built around powerful rhythms, heavyhanded performances, blinding leads and superlative vocals versed in epic themes and structures.  C of V addresses and attacks this criteria like a homeless man at a church sponsored buffet dinner.  I would direct listeners to the "Strongholds of Karak Varn" to see what I mean.  They have power in spades, structures and leads are in check while the vocals reach as far as they can.  Vocalist Magus Corvus isn't the typical tenor vocalist one might expect fronting a band of this stripe, instead he's a bass with an animal ferocity possessed in a wheeling dervish spin of sympathetic energy through track after track.  He may not be the next King Diamond, but he knows feel and he knows how to put that into the record.

Church of Void make a terrific first impression on their debut disc, taking four equally well-composed and distinctive tracks, each with their own feel and memorability factor.  "The Hour is Getting Late" features a gut wrenching sustained double kick frenzy during  the 'middle eight' which only hints of the greatness that is to come from drummer Byron Vortex's terrific performance on EP closer "Summerland".  This latter track is a  dominating showcase of quiet / loud dynamics perhaps in the vein / tone of early Metallica or "Cemetery Gates" by Pantera.  The band does, however, get out while the getting is good, never dragging on or overextending themselves or their stay, leaving the listener craving for more.  The yearning expressed in this last track is a poignant reminder of the frostbitten roots that this band grew out of.

King Goat - Atom (artwork by Freyja)

From: Brighton, England.  Highlights include: "Nuclear Messiah"

and "Cosmic Mastermind".  Rating: 4/5. Release Date: March 17 2013

But now we go from Finland's frost to Brighton's beaches to find another new act in the domicile of doom, King Goat.  Progressive tendencies and suffocating atmosphere is the name of the game here.  King Goat is another one of those amazing Soggy Bog of Doom podcast discoveries (there seems to be at least one every episode), and are also part of a colossal wave of great new bands out of the seaside town on the south of England.  It seems as though each ripple of water that touches the city's shores carries with it a unique and heavy muse who then lays down on the beach and gives birth to a new and quite different sounding band.

King Goat are of the epic doom variety.  Vocalist Jockum is soulful and expressive, singing with a quavering urgency that gives him the air of a mad prophet.  The local doomsayer whom all shun and despise but in the end is proven right as always.  The guitars are chilling and oppressive, the drums plodding but given boosts by some fine cymbal work.

Overall, 'Atom' is a well conceived EP with each song growing organically out of the previous one.  There's no run on effect or anything like that, but there's a tone that wafts up on opening track, "Machine God" that spills outward into each new song, with each one expanding on and adding to the atmosphere.  Tempos are typically of the 'down' to 'mid' kind, drummer Jon understanding that excitement doesn't always have to come from speed, but can also result from tension.  He takes on that often thankless job and gets it just right.

The recording isn't of the best quality, which is understandable with King Goat being such a new band (and from the looks of it a young band as well), I suspect a high quality recording will bring this band's full potential to light.  As it stands, 'Atom' sounds like a live recording and if it is, they already show some nice polish in terms of interplay and tightness as a unit, which is all the more impressive considering there's five of them usually all playing different rhythms.  It's a promising debut, I can't wait to see what they do next.  One gets the feeling that when the scaly and bloated muse visits them again their next release will be something truly epic.

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