Legend has it that among the peoples of the Weedia there is a technique known as the ‘earthbong’ whereby a young one coming of age ascends to the top of Trichome Mountain, presents the sacred terpene relics to the goddess, and learns how to get high off the very air itself. Science calls it a ‘breathing technique,’ but you, me and the Weedia know it’s fucking magic, no question.

Kiel, Germany’s Earthbong made their full-length debut in 2018 with the hour-long One Earth One Bong — the title perhaps suggesting that all bongs are a part of the greater Earthbong, connected somehow by cannabinoid quantum entanglement — comprising four songs that have become among the defining releases for a niche known as bong metal. Repetitive, usually longform riffing, a doomed, sludgy cast, roaring vocals and more tonal heft than a Trichome Mountain avalanche; these are some of the characteristics on offer born out of the sludge wrought by the likes of Weedeater or Bongzilla, Bongripper, of course Sleep‘s Dopesmoker LP, Sabbath, Electric Wizard, and so forth. But through the work of Earthbong and acolytes of their ilk — arguable forerunners Belzebong, as well as Bongfoot, Bonginator, BongBongBeerWizards, among others — a microgenre has grown where once there was only hyperweedism and a lot of volume. Magic again, I know.

The consuming, duly musty-smelling 62 minutes of One Earth One Bong are a masterclass in aural dankness presented over four obviously extended pieces: “Drop Dead” (17:47), “Maze Crawler” (13:39), “Stash” (14:58) and “Gathering” (16:29), and in true punk rock fashion, the music invites the listener to take it more seriously than it seems to take itself. Even the fast parts are slow, and as the opener and longest track (immediate points) looks to make its first statement, the band six years ago following up on their Demo 2018 (review here) that offered proof-of-concept and included a shorter version of “Drop Dead,” indeed it’s a bong hit. They leave little doubt this sample was recorded organically in the as-yet-mellow lumber takes hold to establish the riff for a few minutes before they hit it full-volume. First the trance, then the tonal roundhouse kick to the head. Classic stuff.

Outwardly, the impression is raw. Even after “Drop Dead” clicks on its fuck-you pedal and begins the churn in earnest, Earthbong maintain the march as the first vocal bellows arrive, circa eight minutes in. “Maze Crawler” is a few minutes shorter and more active in the early going, topped with a harsher scream in alongside the lower gutturalism, but part of what “Drop Dead” is doing at the start of the record — aside from taking rips — is setting the mood, and the patience with which it does so is an essential element of the proceedings that follow. The arrangements are straightforward — guitar, bass, drums, nasty vocals, some samples — and while not without dynamic, the manner in which the songs hammer home their parts and ride the slow grooves they conjure is essential to what works so well throughout One Earth One Bong. It wouldn’t work if each song had 15 parts and jumped from one to the next in proggy style. Even as “Maze Crawler” layers its solo as it nods past the midsection and deeper into the second half, the vibe stays thick, plodding and mellow.

This of course builds to a roaring payoff, righteously punctuated by crash and pummeling noisily before the droning comedown that leads into the single note of guitar and declarative drumming that open “Stash.” Like most of what surrounds, it’s mostly instrumental — if they were yelling for all 15 minutes of the song, it would be a lot, mind you — but throaty shouts appear early before being subsumed into the undulating riff. There are ebbs and flows as the penultimate plodder oozes along, a quiet stretch in the middle before a resurgence no less satisfyingly awesome for being completely expected uses first a solo and then extra-biting vocals to convey a crescendo, bringing to light — such as it is light at all — the dynamic happening throughout One Earth One Bong.

It’s a strength that, given the extremity on display throughout and the general beat-you-over-the-head-with-this-riff nature of the work as a whole, I’m not sure it would be appropriate to call subtle, but at very least it’s not something they’re consciously playing toward — dynamics, that is — but the trio manage to convey the album as a singular construction without actually being the same thing for an hour. Consistency of tone and general atmospheric disposition around the brutalist impulse are of course part of what draws the material together — and the songs to a degree are supposed to be alike — but Earthbong‘s triumph is reaped through sounding monolithic without monotony, and there’s more flexibility in One Earth One Bong than one might at first realize as the band buries the listener’s head in dirt-coated distortion.

Closer “Gathering” bookends with “Drop Dead” and unfolds over two central movements, the first built to a head across the first seven minutes that comes through like High on Fire played at half-speed. This devolves by the time they reach the eight-minute mark into feedback that’s the better part of caustic, and there are a few seconds there where it seems like they’re just going to let it go for the entire second half of the song, but, somewhat mercifully, the guitar turns around to introduce another procession, creeping at the beginning of One Earth One Bong‘s last build and rising, gradually, into a Sabbathian celebration of roll that is massive, cavernous, and basking in stoner metal glory. More feedback ends it, but by then it might as well be church organs singing the praises of addled bliss.

The warriors of Weedia would be proud.

I suppose there’s room to quibble about genre at this point, where the divide between stoner metal and bong metal is, if one exists at all, but somehow that feels like missing the point. If it’s solely about generational turnover — and I’m not convinced it is, but one could argue that; my counterpoint is that two generations of stoner-everything tried to get away from being tagged as ‘stoner’; this revels in it while drawing influence from multiple sides of stoner rock, stoner metal, doom and sludge — then fine, but One Earth One Bong casts its depths as a line in the sand between those who can get on board and everyone else, with the latter probably a much higher percentage than the former. Not for everyone? Yeah, that’s the idea, chief.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

It wasn’t my intention when I mapped out today’s posts that all the subjects covered would be German — that’s Deaf Lizard, Mount Hush, Earthbong and Desertfest Berlin — but I got there either way. Sometimes it happens that a day is all-American bands or all-European. I’m sure this isn’t the first time that all-German has happened, and I’m pretty sure I’ve done all-Swedish and all-UK at some point in the last decade and a half, even if I can’t recall the specific instance. I post a lot of stuff. Sometimes these things just happen.

Speaking of posting a lot of stuff, as I reminded the always-a-little-sad-about-it The Patient Mrs. just a while ago, the next two weeks — and maybe the Monday after; I have to see how it goes — will be the Fall Quarterly Review. 100 releases covered, at least. I thought about breaking it up over a month or so, doing a week here, a week there — that happened in Spring and it wasn’t the worst thing ever, but I’ve got more going on in October than that can accommodate, my original plan had been to do the QR in early September — the start of school made that significantly less realistic — and I’m doubled up for a couple days in there as it is. It needs to be done, so it will, and the next two weeks is how it’s being done.

The Pecan had off from school yesterday for Rosh Hashanah — happy new year if you were celebrating — and The Patient Mrs. didn’t, so she and I had pretty much the whole day together while her mom worked. We hit the playground in the morning and the library after, then came home and she continued with a knockoff-Lego my mother brought her the other night that she’s been working on the last few days — the instructions aren’t as good on the cheap ones, so it turns out to be a little more of a challenge; we got her the $300 Lego Deku Tree set, because Zelda, which has like 2,500 pieces and is recommended for 18+ and she finished it in two days — and I got the Sonolith review done in time to post the premiere before the album actually came out today and she got a bath before going back to school today, which was very much needed, so I’ll call the day an unmitigated win. We had a nice time.

Zelda is a big one in the house right now. We did Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom all together, family-style, and now she’s watching Zelda-theory videos on YouTube and has played A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, The Minish Cap (which I finished last week and is fun), the Link’s Awakening Switch remake and The Wind Waker (which I just put on my phone; it lags a bit but not too badly) to one level or another, and in addition to all that, we’ve read through the Hyrule Historia, the Zelda Encyclopedia and the strategy guides for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom more times than I can count. One of those you’re-a-fan-of-this-thing-so-here’s-content-about-it specialty magazines came out around the release last week of Echoes of Wisdom — where you get to be Zelda herself for the first time (on a console; there was a PC game in the ’90s which I know about from… wait for it… reading a shit-ton about the series) — and we’ve read through that and we’re playing through the new game as well, though admittedly, that’s mostly her holding the controller until a boss fight, when she gives it to me, or a puzzle, when she gives it to her mother and then yells at her to do it right the first time. Turns out Zelda is some high-stakes shit when you’re six going on seven. Did I mention we’re putting together a giant birthday party for the 19th? Should make that second week of the Quarterly Review even more fun.

This weekend is a different birthday party (not hers) and then Sunday work on the QR and recovery from the day before. These things take a lot out of everybody, her not the least of all, so might try to get some movement in early in the day and then chill out. She’s best if you can get her out in the AM, but her sensory needs and her movement needs are so high — you should’ve seen her in the fastest spinny thing at the playground yesterday; I would have vomited and then died, even at her age — as she embodies the ADHD diagnosis questionnaire’s line about “Driven, as if by a motor” so much that some day I tell her to get it tattooed on her person, that she can’t really even out if she doesn’t get over that hurdle. School knows it too; it’s why she has the wobble-chair written into her 504 education plan. Between this and meds, she is thriving in Hyrule as well as actual reality. Some days it’s harder to see that in the big picture, but it’s true nonetheless. She’ll be a weirdo forever though, and she comes by it honestly enough.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun out there, whatever you’re up to, and don’t forget to hydrate as we move into Fall. This month the leaves in New Jersey start change, and I’m looking forward to that, not the least because it will probably start right around the time the QR is done. Ha. In any case, thanks again for reading.

FRM.

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Tags: Earthbong, Earthbong One Earth One Bong, Germany, Kiel, One Earth One Bong, Unsigned bands

This entry was posted on Friday, October 4th, 2024 at 11:27 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.