Shadowmaster - Shadowmaster (2017)
Formed as Desert Crone, and releasing
one EP before taking their current name from its closing track, the
Swedish group of Shadowmaster have already done their part to earn
good will and favorable buzz from fans of dirty doom. Now that
they've put together a full album under their new incarnation, the
three-piece band has an eight-song set of bassy assaults, slow-grind
rhythms, brazen howls, and alienating distortions. Happily, the
whole grimy affair is getting a CD release courtesy of Seeing Red
Records, and assuming it gets the attention and acclaim it deserves,
a vinyl release hopefully won't be too far off, though the hour-plus
run-time will demand double disks in that event.
With crashes of cymbals echoing away
over the twisted growls of the guitar, the group raises quite a din,
bending it to torturous paths and slamming out chords with little
mercy to their mood. The namesake song from the Desert Crone EP gets
revisited, and fitted in well with the rest of the malignant vibes
the album carries, and which give it such a seething subdermal energy
despite the overall slow pacing.
And for all the nastiness that's pumped
into each thick-bodied strum, there's an unnerving streak of
psychedelia running through most of it. Call it a time capsule of
dark-side '60s by way of Swedish memory, or just an updated sludge
interpretation, but whatever the prompting, it works well in the
context of the heavy blasts so regular across the songs, exceptions
like the entirety of “The Lizard King” aside. For the most part,
the shit going down is big, buzzy, and downright mean in tone,
whether they're using vocals to complement the riffs or not, and
that's before even addressing the nineteen-minute finishing song.
And on top of all that, it's pretty easy to groove to, assuming a
blend of doom, sludge, and psych metal suits your tastes. If that's
the case, get yourself a copy already.
~ Gabriel
For Fans Of; Acid Bath, Brume, Goya,
Raedon Kong, Wounded Giant
~
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