Posted in Features on April 29th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
The statistics of COVID-19 change with every news cycle, and with growing numbers, stay-at-home isolation and a near-universal disruption to society on a global scale, it is ever more important to consider the human aspect of this coronavirus. Amid the sad surrealism of living through social distancing, quarantines and bans on gatherings of groups of any size, creative professionals — artists, musicians, promoters, club owners, techs, producers, and more — are seeing an effect like nothing witnessed in the last century, and as humanity as a whole deals with this calamity, some perspective on who, what, where, when and how we’re all getting through is a needed reminder of why we’re doing so in the first place.
Thus, Days of Rona, in some attempt to help document the state of things as they are now, both so help can be asked for and given where needed, and so that when this is over it can be remembered.
Thanks to all who participate. To read all the Days of Rona coverage, click here. — JJ Koczan
Days of Rona: Rodger Mortis of Cursed Monk Records (Galway, Ireland)
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We’re doing OK. We’ve stopped mailing orders for a few weeks as we are limiting going outside as much as possible. We have made our entire digital catalog free so hopefully this will help folks while away the hours of isolation. We’ve also started up a podcast (The Cursed Cast) which will highlight some of our favourite labels and the excellent acts they put out. So again, hopefully this will help people pass the time. Health-wise, we’re fine. We both came down with a cold the first week, which ramped up the paranoia as we’re both high risk. But thankfully it passed. We also had to postpone our wedding, but that’s small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.
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We’re in lockdown at the moment, so you have to stay at home except to buy food, care for vulnerable people, do work deemed essential or briefly exercise within 2km (1.2 miles) of home. When you are out you have to adhere to social distancing. The state has deployed hundreds of extra police on the streets and passed laws to enforce the restrictions – violators can be arrested, fined €2,500 ($2715) and jailed for six months.
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We live in a small town in the West of Ireland, the community seem to be taking this very seriously which is great. Ireland as a whole seems to be doing its best and giving the situation the gravity it deserves. Plus, comparatively to other countries, it’s not too bad here yet. The Government has taken the proper steps, you can get a test if you need to, and there’s plenty of food on the shelves. I think it’s much scarier for Amanda (Cursed Monk Records co-founder, Rodge’s Fiancee) as her whole family lives in the States.
Music-wise, I can see the community coming together and helping each other through. It’s a beautiful thing. Times are hard, but we will come out the other side.
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I want people to take this very seriously. Wash your hands. Give people space if you absolutely have to go out. If you’re wearing protective gloves or homemade masks, please learn how to use them properly. But most of all, if you are not working on the front lines or in essential services, just stay at home. It’s easy. There’s endless entertainment online, in books, around the house, in your own head. Plus, the world is more connected than it has ever been. If you need to talk to someone, jump online or pick up the phone. There’s no excuse.
As for our situation as a label, I want people to know that we are not going anywhere, and we will strive to keep releasing dark musical esoterica from the underground.
Posted in Reviews on October 4th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Oh hi, I didn’t see you there. Earlier this week — Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and yes, even Wednesday — the alarm went off at 4AM as usual and I got up, got coffee going and a protein bar and sat down to write, starting basically around quarter-after with a quick email check and whatnot. In terms of basic timing, this last morning of the Fall 2019 Quarterly Review is no different. I even have the baby monitor streaming on my phone as I would most mornings, so I can keep an eye on when The Pecan gets up. What’s changed is I’m sitting in a hotel lobby in Oslo, Norway, having just arrived on an overnight flight from Newark. Managed to sleep some on the plane and I’m hopeful adrenaline will pick up the rest of the slack as regards getting through the day. That and caffeine, anyhow.
Although, speaking of, my debit card doesn’t work and I’ll need to sort that out.
First thing’s first, and that’s reviews. Last batch of 10 for the week. We made it. Thanks as always for reading and being a part of this thing. Let’s wrap it up in style, and because I like working on a theme, three Irish bands in a row close out. Hey, I went to Ireland this year.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Ufomammut, XX
Five years ago, Roman cosmic doom masters When Our Online Writing Paper Service Will Be of Use to You: If the question "Who can Alitalia Seat Assignmentss professionally?" bothers you a lot and you need an Ufomammut took a reflective look back at their career for its 15th anniversary with the documentary/live-performance DVD Buy Apa Format Essay Buy Apa Format Essay - Secure Assignment Writing and Editing Website - Get Help With Quality Essays, Research Papers, Reviews and Proposals At XV (review here). And since one might define the arc of their tenure as constantly trying to top themselves, for their 20th anniversary, they’ve issued a 12LP boxed set, titled simply GDIC's experts provide professional federal http://blog.cbipsi.com/mba-admission-essays-services-case-studies-of-successful-applicants/, as well as consulting services to help you communicate effectively your solution to XX, that compiles their nine albums to-date and tops them off with the mostly-subdued-style online contemporary essays find more Online masters of art education thesis architectural thesis XX itself, which reimagines past cacophonies like “Mars” and “Plouton” in a quieter context. That part of the mega-offering issued through their own Buy Computer Engineering Resume Cover Letter Of at professional essay writing service. Order custom research academic papers from the best trusted company. Just find a great help for Supernatural Cat imprint comprises six songs recorded live and makes highlights out of the hypnotic strum and incantations of “Satan” as well as the rumbling drone of “Lacrimosa,” which takes on new emotional resonance for the shoegazy treatment it receives. I’ve said on multiple occasions throughout the years that Buy research proposal,professional term paper writing services. Buy an authentic. http://www.cfavm.ca/?nathaniel-hawthorne-research-paper,Sociology Homework Help Online.Custom my essay. Ufomammut are a band to be treasured, and I stand by that 100 percent. The http://www.opsi.org/?business-ethics-dissertation The vice of cheap article writing began in nineties when internet was discovered and various academicians tried to exploit XX box should be perceived by fans as an opportunity to do likewise.
Less than a year after issuing their second long-player in the form of 24/7 support service will answer all your questions. You can buy http://www.plurmac.mx/i-always-do-my-homework-at-night/ on our web site coolessay.net. Holocene (review here) through Finding a weblink that will write a great essay for you is harder than it may seem. Write My Essay Cheap will help you to survive in Blackseed and types of masters degrees thesis http://shkafpodrugi.by/?cheap-writers-services Numbering assignment law college admission essays community service Doom Stew Records, Pittsburgh atmosludgers kite runner comparison essay Format Of The Business Plan For Me gender pay gap thesis miranda vs arizona essay Horehound align with DHU Records for the two-song 8″ EP Weight, which brings “Unbind” and “The Heavy,” two new cuts that, while I’m not sure they weren’t recorded at the same time as the last album — that is, they may have been — they nonetheless showcase the emergent melodic breadth and instrumental ambience that is developing in their sound. Even as “Unbind” rolls toward its low-end tempo kick, it does so with marked patience and a willingness to stay slow until just the right moment, which is not something every band cane effectively do. “The Heavy,” meanwhile, builds itself around a Crowbar-style dirge riff before Shy Kennedy‘s verse arrives as a standalone element, all the instruments around her dropping out from behind. That moment alone, frankly, is worth the price of admission, as whether it’s through that extra inch in diameter of the platter itself or through the audio of the tracks in question, Horehound continue to distinguish themselves.
I’m not sure I’m qualified to write about Lingua Ignota‘s CALIGULA (on Profound Lore), but I’m not sure anyone else is either. Like a self-harmonizing mega-Jarboe turning existential horror into epic proclamations of “I don’t eat/I don’t sleep” on “DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR?” amid bass throb and terrifying melodic layering before making bedroom black metal sound like the lightweight self-indulgence it’s always been on the subsequent check-out-the-real-shit “BUTCHER OF THE WORLD,” Kristin Hayter‘s work is little short of experimentalist brilliance. She is minimal and yet over-the-top, open in creative terms but unwaveringly dark and rife with melody but severe to the point now and again of true aural abrasion. She weaves a context of her own into “FUCKING DEATHDEALER” as she recalls the lyrics to the aforementioned “BUTCHER OF THE WORLD,” while the outright brutality of “SPITE ALONE HOLDS ME ALOFT” is married to a piano-led meditation that, even without the noise wash from whence it comes, is enough to recast visions of what heavy is and can be in musical terms. I won’t pretend to get all the references like “kyrie eleison” (“lord have mercy”) worked into “IF THE POISON WON’T TAKE YOU MY DOGS WILL” and the violent strains surrounding, but it’s impossible not to realize the power of what you’re hearing when you listen.
With an intensity born out of a history of industrial music and focus on tight rhythms making an impact in even-tighter songwriting, Valborg are neither beholden to death metal nor entirely separate from it, but their style has taken on a life of its own over the course of the last 10 years, and their latest offering, Zentrum (on Prophecy Productions), is the German trio’s most individualized take yet, whether that’s shown in the unbridled melodicism of “Anomalie,” the sludgy riff that drives the barking “Ultragrab” or the seemingly unrelenting snare pops of “Kreuzer” that, even when they finally release that tension, still make it only a temporary reprieve. Valborg‘s sense of control through the epic “Nonnenstern” should not be understated, and though the track is under four minutes long, yes, “epic” very much applies. Suitably enough, they close with “Vakuum” and throw everything at the listener at once before resolving in relatively peaceful atmospherics that could just as easily serve as an introduction to the next round of malice to come, whenever it shows up.
It’s not exactly true, about their being no light ever on Boston post-metallers Glacier‘s latest full-length, No Light Ever. Sure, it’s plenty dark and heavy and brooding and all that fun stuff, and the riffs get loud and the drums break stuff and all that, but it’s certainly colorful in its way as well, and more than just shades of black on black. Comprised of four tracks cumbersomely titled in keeping with the traditions of the likes of Red Sparowes and the band’s own past work, cuts like “O World! I Remain No Longer Here.” and “The Bugles Blow, Fanned by Hysteria.” stretch themselves out along a scope as massive as the tonality the band emits, and as the wash of “We Glut Our Souls on the Accursed,” — the comma is part of the title there — gives way to feedback and the onset of “And We Are Damned Amid Noble Sound.” the sense of immersion is complete and clear as the priority under which they’re working. It’s about the whole album, or at least the two sides, as a unified work, and about crafting a world through the atmosphere evoked in the material. It works. If they say there’s no light in that world, so be it. It’s whatever they want it to be.
Not-entirely-bereft-of-vowels South Carolina heavy trio MNRVA make their debut with the three-song EP Black Sky, a beast of a short release led by the riffs of guitarist Byron Hark on a stretch of ’90s-style crunch and sludge, with bassist/vocalist Kevin Jennings and drummer Gina Ercolini adding to the weight and shove of the proceedings, respectively. “Not the One” has the hook, “No Solution” has the impact and the title-track has both, and though I’m by no means saying the issue of their sound is settled 100 percent and they won’t grow or find their way from this — again, their debut — EP, they do prove to be well in charge of where their songs head in terms of mood and the atmosphere that comes through elements like the blown-out vocals and the rumbling bass beneath the lead guitar in the second half of “Black Sky” itself. Indeed, it’s those harsher aspects that help MNRVA immediately establish their individuality, and the vibe across these 18-plus minutes is that the punishment is only getting started.
Just because Irish four-piece Coroza — guitarist/vocalists Ciaran Coghlan and Jack O’Neill, bassist/vocalist Jonny Canning and drummer Ollie Cunningham — might write a song that’s 18 minutes long, that doesn’t mean they forgot to actually make it a song as well. Thus it is that extended cuts like “The Plutonian Drug” (18:24) and closer “Iron from the Sky” (19:30) have plenty of room to flesh out their more progressive aspects amid the other three also-kind-of-extended pieces on Chaliceburner, the group’s ambitious hour-plus/five-track debut full-length. Each song essentially becomes a front-to-back movement on its own, with shifts between singers arranged thoughtfully from one part to the next and hooks along the way to serve as landmarks for those traversing, as in the opening “Chaliceburner” or the gruff winding moments of “Mountain Jaw,” which follows the nine-minute sax-inclusive centerpiece “Scaltheen,” because of course there’s a saxophone in there somewhere. All of this is a recipe for a band biting off more than they can chew stylistically, but Coroza manage pretty well the various twists and turns of their own making, particularly considering it’s their first album.
Encased front and back by witchy samples and creepy vibes, Sept. 2019’s She of the Woods is the second demo in two months to come from Cork, Ireland’s Noosed. And you know it when they get around to the closing seven-minute title-track because it’s just about the only thing other than “Intro” that isn’t raging with grind intensity, but that stuff can be fun too. I don’t know how much witch-grind-doom is out there, but Noosed‘s first, self-titled demo (released in August) had a sludgy edge that seems to have separated out to some degree here into a multifaceted personality. Can one possibly be certain of the direction the band will ultimately take? Shit no. It’s two demos with basically no time differential between them. But if they can effectively bridge the gap between “Fuck Up,” “Wretch” and “She of the Woods,” or even play directly with the contrast, they could be onto something with all this noise and fuckall.
The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — has it such that Irish four-piece zhOra wanted to do something less complicated than was their 2017 album, Ethos, Pathos, Logos (discussed here), so they went ahead and wrote a song that’s five minutes long and purposefully hops between subgenres, going from sludge to doom to a deathcore breakdown, with a snare-pop count-in, to blackened death metal and then back to a lumbering chug to finish out. Okay, zhOra, “Ruthless Bastards” is a an awful lot of metal and an awfully good time, but you missed the mark on “simple” by a considerable margin. If indeed the band had been plotting toward something, say, easier to play or to compose, “Ruthless Bastards” ain’t it. They’ll have to settle for being brutal as fuck instead. Something tells me they’ll survive having made that trade, as much as anything will.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 6th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
In September, Irish bashers Ten Ton Slug will take stage as part of the considerable lineup for HRH Doom vs. Stoner in Sheffield, England, and that’s well worth anticipating. But rather than sit on their collective ass and wait, the band will also hit Slovenia — and reportedly elsewhere — this summer and this month do a quick run in the UK, three nights over four days, that will include a spot at Hammerfest in Wales. They’re also reportedly working on new material, which makes sense, and below, they offer the announcement officially welcoming bassist Pavol Rosa into the lineup. Clearly a busy time for them, but fortunately they’re heavy enough to live up to their name, so if they get stressed out or whatever, there’s an outlet for it. At least until they blow a fuse.
They put out a video for “Matriarch of Slime” — is it just me thinking of Futurama between that and the band’s name? Slurm, anyone? — last Fall and you’ll find that streaming below, under the info and dates. You know how we do.
Like this:
After a hectic 2018 which saw the band support Black Label Society, Corrosion of Conformity and Conan along with releasing a video for ‘Matriarch of Slime’ and playing Metaldays, Amplified and Manorfest 2018, Ten Ton Slug have announced a change in bassists. Eoghain Wynne has made the decision to step down from bass duties and Pavol Rosa (also of Soothsayer and Zhi Ren) has stepped up to complete the lineup for what looks to be a very busy 2019.
A statement released by the band:
“We are delighted to welcome Pavol Rosa (also of Soothsayer and Zhi Ren) as our new bass Slug.
He has spilled blood for the Slug already at the Siege of Limerick, he played MetalDays 2018 with us and did an incredible job, his work ethic is unreal and he can be powered for 3 days on one cup of sparkling water – Pavol was the only choice for us all as Eoghain’s successor on bass.
Tunes are up to speed, new tunes are ready to go and we’re looking forward to hitting the road together and seeing what 2019 brings!”
Hard at work on the follow-up to 2017’s “Blood and Slime”, Ten Ton Slug embark on a short run of UK shows in late March with shows in Edinburgh (Bannermans, March 20th), an appearance at Hammerfest in Wales (Friday March 22nd) and a London headline show in the Big Red in Holloway (March 23rd). The Slug has also been announced as one of the main stage opening bands at Metaldays 2019 in Slovenia in July and are currently working on securing European dates around this appearance. A prominent slot at HRH Doom vs Stoner in Sheffield in September has also been announced, with more festival slots secured but under wraps for the minute.
Expect to hear new material off the next release on the road from March as the Slug slowly treks across Ireland, the UK and Europe.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on October 23rd, 2017 by JJ Koczan
Irish sludge nasties Weed Priest issue their four-song full-length, Consummate Darkness, on Halloween via Cursed Monk Records. There is a moment toward the chug-mad ending of album opener “Witch’s Curse” that, somehow fittingly to the title, conveys a sense of the genuinely unhinged. I don’t know if the idea was that, as his own guitar and that of Sean “The Tormentor” Sullivan and the bass of Ragas Iscariot devolve into crackling amp noise, the vocals of Adam Diavol — points all around on the names, guys; lest we forget Micheál Dúlachán on drums — shift from the lower-register extreme growing to a higher-pitched cackle. Is this the witch in “Witch’s Curse” speaking directly to the listener? I don’t know, but it sounds utterly fucked, and I’m pretty sure that’s the point. Point taken.
Weed Priest issued their thick-rolling self-titled debut long-player (review here) in 2013 and brought with their volume worship a sense of grim-hued ritualizing. Consummate Darkness feels more about rawer scathe. Set up across two vinyl sides on which a shorter track leads into a longer one — “Witch’s Curse” (8:04) into “Vampyr” (10:33) on side A; “SkyDaddy” (6:36) into “The Mass” (14:29) on side B — the record isn’t without a sense of structure, but as the horror sample leads to the plodding, post-Electric Wizard launch of “Vampyr,” Weed Priest find themselves engaging a grittier form of extremity, less outwardly crushing and more about the overarching filth conjured through the riffs and the rhythmic nod, the theme taking shape really in “Vampyr” and finding catchier foothold in the speedier “SkyDaddy” before “The Mass” brings about a last push into rumbling oblivion, grueling and mirroring the viciousness of “Witch’s Curse” early while finding spaciousness later in its extended solo section.
Brutal? Why yes it fucking is. That would seem to be the point. One can hear a dynamic shift between the more “rock”-based songcraft of “SkyDaddy” and “The Mass,” certainly, but Weed Priest are far less about showing off their range than they are about bludgeoning their audience with it, and that suits them. “The Mass” ends Consummate Darkness on a long-fading drum march and the funereal vibe is noteworthy; a dirge undertaken with a relished sense of dismemberment, flayed skin and any number of other medieval cruelties having been brought to bear through volume and tempo-be-damned sonic terror.
Today I have the pleasure of hosting the video premiere for “Vampyr” from Consummate Darkness, which can be preordered now via the links below. Please find it on the player here, followed by more info from the PR wire, and if you think your personal constitution is up to it, enjoy.
Here we go:
Weed Priest, “Vampyr” official video premiere
Weed Priest’s second much anticipated full length album “Consummate Darkness” is coming out on Samhain (31th of October) 2017 as vinyl, cd and digital via Cursed Monk Records.
“Lo and behold! From the depths of the smoke filled dungeons, from the tops of the mountains of madness, the priest is coming back with the new opus. Four hymns depicting the unholy ceremonies of union with darkness, four sermons of crawling doom, four spits into the face of conformity and meekness.”
Adam (guitar, vocals), Ragas (bass) and Adrian (drums) were brought together by the love of classic Black Sabbath sound, seventies psychedelic rock, doom/sludge metal and their interest in occultism in 2009. In 2011 Weed Priest released a well received demo CD. A grandiose debut self-titled full length album came out in 2013 and is now sold out. It was followed by “Worship” EP (2014). In 2014 the drum throne was taken over by Michael. Second guitar player Sean also joined. Two split releases followed: split single with Northern Irish doom brothers Astralnaut (February 2015) and split EP with Italian doomsters Black Capricorn (September 2016).
WEED PRIEST: Adam Diavol – lead guitar/vox Ragas Iscariot – bass San “Balor” Sullivan – guitar Micheál Dúlachán – drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 12th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
Cursed Monk Records has posted preorders now for Consummate Darkness, the second album from Galway, Ireland, riff worshipers Weed Priest. I’ll grant that after my recent experience traveling to Dublin for the Obelisk-sponsored inaugural edition of the Emerald Haze festival, I’ve got Irish heavy on the brain, but even if that wasn’t the case, I remember full well the “holy shit that’s fucking insane” impression Weed Priest made with their 2013 self-titled debut (review here), and their follow-up 2015 split with Astralnaut (review here) was only too gleeful to follow suit.
The four-piece also put out a split last year with Black Capricorn that you can hear at the bottom of this post, and I’ll hope to have more to come on Consummate Darkness ahead of its Halloween release date through Cursed Monk. Until then, here’s the announcement and background on the band, courtesy of the label via the PR wire:
Cursed Monk Records are proud to announce that Weed Priest’s sophomore album Consummate Darkness will be be released on Vinyl. CD and digital, via Cursed Monk Records, on October 31st 2017.
“Lo and behold! From the depths of the smoke filled dungeons, from the tops of the mountains of madness, the priest is coming back with the new opus. Four hymns depicting the unholy ceremonies of union with darkness, four sermons of crawling doom, four spits into the face of conformity and meekness.”
Adam (guitar, vocals), Ragas (bass) and Adrian (drums) were brought together by the love of classic Black Sabbath sound, seventies psychedelic rock, doom/sludge metal and their interest in occultism in 2009. In 2011 Weed Priest released a well received demo CD. A grandiose debut self-titled full length album came out in 2013 and is now sold out. It was followed by “Worship” EP (2014). In 2014 the drum throne was taken over by Michael. Second guitar player Sean also joined. Two split releases followed: split single with Northern Irish doom brothers Astralnaut (February 2015) and split EP with Italian doomsters Black Capricorn (September 2016).
Weed Priest’s second much anticipated full length album “Consummate Darkness” is coming out on Samhain (31th of October) 2017 as vinyl, cd and digital via Cursed Monk Records.
Weed Priest can offer a truly heavy doom metal experience. They have built their reputation as a solid live act and have shared stage with the likes of Church Of Misery, Wounded Kings, Meth Drinker, Hooded Priest, Argus, Gorilla Monsoon, Hour of 13, Black Capricorn, Slomatics, Conan, and many more.
Consummate Darkness is available to preorder now via the Cursed Monk Bandcamp, where you will also be able to stream Weed Priest’s brand new track, “Vampyr”
Posted in On the Radar on April 15th, 2013 by JJ Koczan
Irish bashers Weed Priest do it big on their self-titled debut. Exclusively. The six-track collection of thoroughly stoned riffs and burly echoes arrives in a green-tinted matte-finish digipak that gives little hint of the heft actually contained within the trio’s dark, vaguely cultish material, and it’s already received a due amount of “OMG”eification from critics drawn in by the album’s downtrodden melange of cycle after cycle of lumbering largesse, riff building on riff through telegraphed changes at minimal but still grooving paces, only ever getting up to speed to slouch back into its apparently terminal atmospheric defeat. Well fine. The record sounds big. And it’s heavy. There. I said it too.
More than that — because fucking everything is heavy — Weed Priest‘s Weed Priest is impeccably produced to maximize that heaviness, and though one might think I’m just gearing up to toss out an Electric Wizard comparison, I’m actually not going to do it. The Galway-based trio of Adrian Elatha (drums), Ragas Walpurgis (bass) and Adam de Monlung (guitar/vocals) have way, way more in common with Sleep than they do with thee Wizard — who are otherwise responsible for so much of the weedian fare coming out of the Isles — but I guess if you want to take it all to its most primordial level, it’s all Sabbath at heart, and Weed Priest show little interest in shying away from that, a Zoroaster-type semi-psychedelia emerging out of the Ufomammut-style stomp of their extended opener “Final Spell.” It’s a cool sound, and they put it to solid use across the self-titled, the cavernous vocal sound giving even the shorter “Erichtho” — a paltry seven minutes long — a consistency in its sense of space with the opener or the later “Weed Priest” and “Day of Reckoning” to come.
The band formed in 2008, this is their first official release following a 2011 demo, and if what you’re looking for is a bash-you-over-the-head-with-tone onslaught of pot and horror worship (a clip from the 1972 movie The Devil starts off), then there’s little about Weed Priest‘s Weed Priestthat isn’t going to be your favorite new Bandcamp link. A marching chug on “Walpurgia” pretty much sums up the crux of the full-length: It’s not about reinventing stoner metal or doom so much as taking the familiar and making it their own. I don’t know if caking it in reverb is enough to get that done over a long term, but they did hit on a distinct sound for their first long-player that at least gives them a base to work from next time out, and as “Thy Kingdom Gone” adds to the psychedelic push in its midsection en route to the massive one-two punch of “Weed Priest” and “Day of Reckoning,” there’s nothing to say Weed Priest don’t have something to offer beneath their resin-coated exterior for those who’d pay their debut repeat visits.
I’d be interested to hear how they cut their runtime down perhaps to accommodate a future vinyl offering, hitting around 40 minutes instead of Weed Priest‘s just under 61, but the longer stretch does work well to emphasize the repetition and the put-you-in-a-trance riffs, which seem to find their own morass between “Weed Priest” (11:14) and “Day of Reckoning” (13:52), neither song so much wandering into a jam as hammering down upon its central idea. For a bit of symmetry, “Day of Reckoning” echoes the sluggish thud of “Final Spell,” but really, it’s a symmetry that’s been present throughout the largely unipolar release, and though there are hints of melody in the guitar here and there, they’re so buried under the tonnage of the ultra-pivotal riffs around which the song is based, that it’s hard to keep focus on anything but that. Which is the idea. Which is why it works.
