If you’ve been around stoner rock for 35 seconds or more, chances are you’ve encountered at least one band that made you say, “Damn, this sounds just like Black Sabbath.” Assuming you weren’t actually listening to Black Sabbath when you said it, it could have been just about anyone. In one way or another, every band in the genre is indebted to the Birmingham gods, whether they like it or not. San Franciscan four-piece Orchid like it. They like it plenty.

Orchid’s debut EP, the 16-minute Through the Devil’s Doorway (out via Germany’s The Church Within Records) is an exercise in praise of all things Sabbath. Bassist Nickel is Geezer, guitarist Mark Thomas Baker is Tony Iommi, drummer Carter Kennedy is no Bill Ward, but no one is, and vocalist Theo Mindell is cast in the Ozzy Osbourne role, which he handles ably (he is also a tattoo artist and in charge of the band’s formidable graphics). The four songs that make up the release bring Sabo worship to new heights most bands wouldn’t dare to reach even if they could; each one having a companion in the Ozzy era catalog.

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Veterans of the Doom Shall Rise festival and named for the plates shifting continents beneath the surface of the earth, Dutch doomers Tekhton come on broadcasting their heaviness before the music is even played. On their Doom Dealer/The Church Within debut, Summon the Core, the five-piece roots into a mineshaft under Sleep’s Holy Mountain and emerges covered in the sooty rhythms of bassist Jurgen and drummer Marcore, raw riffs from Dirk and Ralph and the throaty, young-Cisernosian vocals of Bert-Ren? (last names need not apply). Like The Deep Blue, this is pure Heavy, “Dragonaut”-worship, that unlike a lot of followers, actually manages to capture the oft-forgotten spontaneous aesthetic that was a big part of what made Sleep so influential in the first place.

Soft, acoustic tones permeate the cryptically titled centerpiece track “031045” (which some quick Wikipedia research reveals is the day America firebombed Tokyo during WWII, using the US month/day/year — if they’re going with the European day/month/year, it’s the start of the Tigers/Cubs World Series), but that respite and some other atmospheric movements like that ending side B cut “There be Giants” aside, Summon the Core is bent on weathering monuments to dust and forging in their place a landscape pockmarked with huge three-toed footprints. Boldly opening with the longest tracks, “Oxen of the Sun,” Tekhton set out a stoner metal challenge: dare you to make it through this. A test of their audience. Very doom.

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