You might recall esoteric doom prodigy Indy Shome from Providence thunderfoots Queen Elephantine, whose album Kailash was reviewed on this site a while back. Well, even if you don’t, I count Indy as a friend of the site and doom compatriot, so when he reached out to me about his new project Throne of the Void in the Hundred Petal Lotus, I jumped at the chance to check it out.

Those familiar with Queen Elephantine‘s more experimental edges will recognize some of those elements in Throne of the Void in the Hundred Petal Lotus, and though the production on their first recorded outing — a 16-minute single track bearing the same cumbersome name as the band that can be heard on their MySpace or on the player below — is rough, Shome and company are able to affect a mini-Dopesmoker vibe by the end of the piece, riffing with similarly stoned abandon and droning repetition. I shudder to think of the expanses the band might cover given proper studio time and recording.

The psychedelia present in “Throne of the Void in the Hundred Petal Lotus” (as opposed to all those other thrones of the void out there) is dark and gritty, and where the music leads you to think perhaps there’s going to be a bright turn, there absolutely isn’t one, so as you listen, be prepared for drudgery. I might like to hear Shome and his band experiment with some lighter psychedelic elements à la a massively proportioned Lamp of the Universe — though I’ll allow that band’s propensity for long lotus-infused titles is part of the connection in my head –but until then, their premiere output has a weight to it that’s bound to get the attention of the doomed underground. It has mine, anyway.

Tags: Providence, Rhode Island, Throne of the Void in the Hundred Petal Lotus

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 at 5:07 pm and is filed under On the Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.