It’s not a great name. I think even Kris Clayton — the multi-instrumentalist and driving force behind the UK-based solo-project Camel of Doom — would have to admit that, as band monikers go, it’s far from tops. Hey, he started the band when he was 13. Put to that scale, I don’t think I could’ve been asked to do better, then or probably now, so if you’re spending time wondering what it is about the camel exactly that makes it so doomed, or if the camel is bringing doom or it’s just doom’s camel, you’re only going to be wondering until Clayton‘s latest full-length, 2012’s Psychodramas: Breaking the Knots of Twisted Synapse, knocks you on your ass with the progressive, psychedelic — and yes, doomed — soundscape it creates.

Clayton, a former live guitarist for experimental dirgers Esoteric, performed all the instruments on Psychodramas and handled much of the recording himself (vocals were captured by Esoteric‘s Greg Chandler), but the self-released, hour-long full-length wants nothing for texture, and is rich in its wash of heavy guitars and crushingly dense rhythms. Owing influence to the likes of Godflesh and the trailblazing cosmic doom of Ufomammut and YOB, extended tracks like “The Anger of Anguish” (13:21), “From the Sixth Tower” (11:47) and the massive apex of the penultimate “Machine of Annihilation” (21:09) hone in on a massive feel like space gone slow, Clayton‘s shouts echoing in from deep reaches while shorter set-pieces like the intro “To Purify the Air,” “In This Arid Wilderness” and the outro “So it is Done” add to the ambience.

Apart from “Machine of Annihilation,” the scope of which matches its runtime, the biggest surprise probably comes in “Self Hypnosis I: The Manual,” which ups the speed and the churn to elicit a more natural-sounding Godfleshy kind of inhumanity, steeped in some of the commonalities that band had with ’90s metal before slamming on the brakes as “Self Hypnosis II: The 18th Key” takes hold with a monstrously lumbering sensibility that moves from slow, to slower, to deconstructed noise, a sample paving the way into the aforementioned “Machine of Annihilation,” which opens sweet and contemplative in the tradition of some of YOB‘s epics — looking at you, “Catharsis” — before bridging the gap between Neurosis‘ riffy churn and an unending echo of psychedelic swirling.

The first time I listened to it, I was pretty startled, but don’t let the name fool you, Clayton has something to offer with Camel of Doom, and though the band’s bio is murky — there used to be other members and Clayton has revisited older demos in newer singles, and there was a prior full-length in 2004 called The Desert at Night — if you’re going to start an exploration, Psychodramas is the place to do it. Certainly the album has enough heft and enough space to keep you busy for probably longer than it will take Clayton to come up with another one, though hopefully that’s not nine years from now.

Check out Camel of Doom on Thee Facebooks or on their Bandcamp, from which I snagged the player below:

Tags: Camel of Doom, Camel of Doom Psychodramas, Psychodramas, UK, Unsigned bands

This entry was posted on Monday, March 11th, 2013 at 4:29 pm and is filed under On the Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.