Weighing In Together...

Bongzilla / Tons - Doom Sessions Vol. 4 (2021)

Continuing a steady pace for their split albums in this series, this is the second Doom Sessions release from Heavy Psych Sounds this year. Bringing together the long-running Bongzilla with the Italian group Tons, this installment

The elder of the two bands gets the A-side, and Bongzilla leads with “Mother Flowers Little Helper”, and despite seeming a bit word salad, it makes a big impression. Plugging along on a main riff that does enough work for a stretch of nine and a half minutes, spiced with groaning vocals, hard beats, and a fair amount of high-hat clanging, the tune is a heaping helping of opener to get listeners in the stoner doom mood. “Cosmic Distillate, Nectar Collector” follows, picking up the pace (relatively speaking) with a hooky pull from guitarist Jeff Schultz. Some chuggy breakdown adds to the fun, gaining enough momentum to build a slow-swinging rhythm up and into the exit. “Cupcake” (I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's an ode to an edible) takes a similar tack, but brings in more feedback, spiking things up as the sludge gets consumptive, eventually crawling the tempo down to a seething end.

Tons' side is a single track split into three parts: “Chronic Morning Obesity”. As dismally heavy-sounding as the title suggests, the quartet gets down to semi-psychedelic sludginess, raw vocals and crunching chords complemented by the concessions to harmony which perk up the music. Highly in tune with the style of Bongzilla's contributions, the band thunders along in swampy style, crashing and crushing. A low-mixed sample of someone rambling through a list of all the food they want to cure their munchie cravings shows up in the last slice, making for an entertaining shaping of the mostly-instrumental grooves.

Both sides fit together extremely well, so if you've been in the mood for some fresh and dirty stoner doom, all splashed up with sludgy tendencies, then this double serving is right up your alley. The split officially releases April 23rd, but pre-sales are already up, and going fast, with an assortment of colorways for the vinyl. Cheers to HPS for another winner.

~ Gabriel

For Fans Of; Bomg, Cavity, Dead Existence, Dopethrone, Wizard Smoke

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Tons - Chronic Morning Obesity, Part 1 (320 kbps)

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