My fascination with Aussie stoner and doom continues with the discovery of Adrift for Days, an unsigned doom/psychedelic blues five-piece from Sydney, whose debut album, The Lunar Maria, was released in August. The album is reportedly seven tracks/71 minutes long, and if the couple of songs the band has posted on their MySpace are any indication, it’s no small wonder. “Bury all That’s Chosen” alone is over 15 minutes, and it hardly feels like the band are stretching it on purpose to hit that mark. Seems like business as usual, in other words.

Going by “Bury all That’s Chosen” and the much shorter “The Leech” (a meager 4:59), what Adrift for Days excel at are the quiet, creepy moments of doom, the lone guitar ba-domp, ba-domps. They get a lot of their bluesy feel from that, Ron Prince and the aptly-monikered Lachlan R. Doomsdale handling riffs and solos throughout while the well-balanced bass of Matt Williams — I always feel like the bass never makes it through MySpace‘s audio compression, so to actually hear it is nice — and drums of Steve Kachoyan provide solid rhythmic foundation.

Mick Kaslik‘s vocals have some of that Anselmo/Down “hey whoa momma yeah” inflection that an entire generation of heavy singers seems to have adopted, but he changes it up on “Bury all That’s Chosen” with some Al Cisneros-style monotone that offsets the rest of the song well, and on “The Leech” there’s even a couple screams layered in, so he’s by no means limited to one approach.

Adrift for Days could just as easily be from Maryland as Australia, and with lumbering grooves and a capable showing of melody, they’ve managed to make a good case with these two tracks for keeping them on the radar. I’m sure they also made a few friends this past weekend when they played with Acid King, Pod People and others at the Doomsday Festival in their hometown, and I can only say I wish I’d been there to see it. Doom on, gentlemen.

Tags: Adrift for Days, Australia, Sydney, Unsigned bands

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 at 11:03 am and is filed under On the Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.