Doom bands are too often failed by the singers. I include in that term all the obvious associated heavy-as-an-anvil-on-the-head sludge and stoner genres but let’s focus on doom specifically for a moment. Huge slabs of portentous music making hearts bust asunder with the sheer beauty and horror of what lies beyond. Music like that needs a vocalist with pain in his soul to convey the woeful pointlessness of it all but too many are swamped by the sheer scale of the sound.
In my humble opinion it is a genre crying out for a few more excursions through the crushing gloom that are courageous enough to leave potential vocalists outside the studio door. I can’t help pausing to acknowledge here that instrumental albums like Shakhtyor will hardly ever get the following commanded by those with a decent vocalist in tow. But Hamburg’s guitarist Christian Herzog has produced something that accepts that problem manfully, takes a gamble and, musically at least, succeeds. They’ve been favourably compared to bands such as Neurosis, Ufomammut and Pelican but I’m not sure any of those entirely apply. It’s not a drone-dominated head-fuck either (search out Altaar, released a couple of months ago, for that) or a face wobbling bass vibrate-athon. But rather a journey that treads fine line between sludge, stoner rock and doom while taking on a steady vibe of its own.
The first three or four minutes are more like a warm-up session. It’s a slow burner, partly because it’s graced with a good dose of subtlety and restraint. But the band soon begins to hit its stride and for me it was the third of the four tracks (the final two being longer and representing about two thirds of the album) where things really take off. The album builds into the kind of towering monolithic structure we’ve come to expect from this type of music but without ever getting bogged down into the obvious clichés. It’s thought provoking and almost, we’ll, pleasant to listen to. Always engaging and never, like many instrumental albums tend to do, disappearing up its own proverbial backside.
They say the name translates as ‘the Russian miner’ and the band uses Soviet-style imagery on the front cover. The link apparently comes from a fascination Herzog has with Russia rather than an immediately obvious musical connection. What the music does do is lend itself to lengthy tracks without bludgeoning you into submission. It also escapes the trap of some albums I’ve heard like this where you keep thinking ‘that would have been a good time for the vocalist to come in’. Not the heaviest band of this sort I’ve come across but all the better for it. Leading you willingly alongside, rather than by the scruff of the neck.
Nicely accessible, if that isn’t a dirty word.
(7.5/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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