It is no small thing to begin a stoner metal song in this day and age with a sample of a motorcycle engine revving. If there is one thing that’s going to make your audience say, “Alright, this better be the best riff I’ve ever heard,” it’s that. Not only has it been so done to death throughout this genre, but so often the engine noise has been accompanied by road-ready barn-burner guitar lines, that to expect anything else is pointless. Yet, somehow, “Ape Parade,” the second song on Invisible Orange’s debut full-length, Iron Mountain (Gary the “Landlord” Records), begins with such a sample and goes into a mellow groove before kicking in.

I will say that despite this egregious error on the part of the band (the song ends with the same noise), opener “Run” left a completely different impression the first time I heard it. I don’t recall to what I was listening prior, but there was an out-loud declaration of, “Yes, that sounds about right,” that came with hearing the opening riff of Iron Mountain, so within the first two tracks of the record, we can already see it works both ways. The Denver, Colorado, four-piece run through an expected 10 tracks of ‘90s-inspired stoner metal, bearing heavy riffage from guitarist Adrian Moore and the from-the-stomach Garcia/Hetfield-isms of vocalist Donovan Breazeale with abundant energy and a self-sustained feel that’s definitely reliant on 21st Century production methods, but comes off as reasonably natural nonetheless.

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