Album Review: Domkraft, Sonic Moons
Sonic Moons commemorates the moment when a riff becomes the Riff. The fourth full-length from Swedish trio Domkraft — the stable lineup of bassist/vocalist Martin Wegeland, guitarist Martin Widholm and drummer Anders Dahlgren — is a seven-song/47-minute meditation on nod. As Domkraft have emerged to portray their own vision of psychedelic noise rock and melodic, atmospheric sludge, they haven’t wanted for variety, and they don’t here either as nine-minute cuts “Whispers” and “The Big Chill” bookend a procession that is no less at home casting deep spaces in its mix than honing catharsis via crush.
But Sonic Moons also has this groove. This ur-groove. It is primal, lurching, undulating. Much of the second half of “Whispers” is given to floating lead guitar, but earlier in the track, as all the ambience seems to solidify in the build at about two minutes in and tensely chug through the verse, right at 2:30 it kicks in, and it’s not a full minute before the band are back in the chug from whence they came, but they’ll break up those solos with a reprise and it’s how they end the song as well. It becomes a thread that runs across the album. It’s never quite the same, can be fast like in the barrage shove at the start of “Stellar Winds,” or expansive like when it comes out of the solo in “Magnetism.” It can be the foundation, like in the very-purposeful-seeming centerpiece “Slowburner,” or a blowout like in “Downpour,” maddeningly tense in “Black Moon Rising” and it helps put the crescendo of “The Big Chill” over the top in paying off the entire album while moving deeper into heavy psychedelia than the band have ever gone.
It is able to do all these things, this groove. It is Domkraft‘s own, and it’s never sounded more like a signature than it does here. You understand, I’m not saying Domkraft only have one rhythm. I’m saying that Sonic Moons taps into that node in your brain where the australopithecus once danced to two rocks banged together in time. Each track has its own intention, but feeds into an overarching flow that draws the songs together. A complete work derived from its individual pieces. The Riff becomes the theme around which the material is united. And as themes go, whoever came up with ‘kickass riffs exclusively’ should probably get a trophy.
The album is an accomplishment toward which Domkraft have been steadily building. Clearly working with the production team of Kalle Lilja and Per Stålberg at Welfare Sounds in Gothenburg — they helmed 2021’s Seeds (discussed here) and the band’s 2022 split LP with Slomatics, Ascend/Descend (review here) — and the also-returning Karl Daniel Lidén for mixing and mastering suits them. And Sonic Moons is a step forward from Seeds, which was a step forward from 2018’s Flood (review here), and so on back to 2016’s The End of Electricity (review here), but there will be recognizable elements in some of the harsher vocals, the tonal breadth and the upside-your-head nature of the riffing, but Domkraft are more psychedelic in passages of “The Big Chill” and “Whispers” (thinking the midsection in the latter) than they’ve ever outwardly been, and “Downpour” is heavy space rock à la Monster Magnet that feels like it’s hit the big finish by the time it’s halfway through and only grows more cacophonous from there. Even the cover art by Björn Atldax is in keeping with the spirit of what Domkraft have done before while making it own impression.
Trippy, vast, intermittently sprawling though Sonic Moons is, it’s also grounded in the post-hardcore/noise rock sludge of the band’s roots, and that serves them in their heaviest reaches, whether it’s the start of the extra-noisy “Stellar Winds” or the way “Magnetism” grows epic in its chorus like something New Zealand’s Beastwars might conjure, but churning, and part of that whole-album theme in its riffing. “Slowburner” is a landmark for the release as an entirety in no small part because it seems to strip away everything else that the other songs are doing, whether it’s the airy leads or some other exploration, and bask in the purity of its crunch.
But it wouldn’t be a landmark without those other songs around it, and much of the material throughout Sonic Moons interacts in that way, tracks enhancing each other, working off each other, complementing or contrasting like the dizzying finish of “Downpour” stopping cold as the clarity of the intro to “Black Moon Rising” is counted in, seeming to have discovered an extra layer of thickness as it revives the telltale nod following the closest thing to a departure therefrom. Or without the complexity of the shifts in “The Big Chill,” bass and drums mellowing ahead of the suitably massive peak as the vocals, not the guitar, put it over the top and the guitar sneaks a little melodic resonance into the last 30 seconds or so of the closer, as if to say thanks for coming and they’re not done yet.
That may well be the case and nothing on Sonic Moons leaves one thinking Domkraft are finished growing. If anything, the organic nature of how they’ve done so to this point — four LPs of steady, unforced evolution — sets them up for the longer-term progression that would already seem to be playing out. Their take has become more individualized with time and more malleable, and these tracks magnify what has worked to distinguish the band for the last seven years while actively pushing themselves further as musicians and songwriters.
Domkraft have more space than ever before, and they hit harder. They’re more melodic, but arguably more furious as well. It is so much to their credit that these notions that should be in conflict are not when one actually hears the record, and that Domkraft don’t come out of Sonic Moons sounding like anybody more than themselves. This is an act who’ve taken the time to develop their point of view on the kind of music they want to play, and who are able to reshape that perspective in service to their songs.
Domkraft, Sonic Moons (2023)
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