Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Beastmaker : "Lusus Naturae"

While this band from California indulges in Sabbath worshiping lumber of your more mainstream doom, the manage to have a sound that sets themselves apart from their peers. It's by the third song "Arachne" the vocals are beginning to sound like Acid Bath era Dax Rigg's drugged out baritone that this is most evident. This is fine with me as I prefer this to some one doing a half ass Ozzy impersonation. It also has that spacey pondering tone the Doors also have which Riggs and company began to explore. Bands like Electric Wizard and Sleep of course might be reference points, but I feel the vocal melodies hook into with greater ease. The pound into the stomp of metal on "Eyes Are Watching", that finds them at the border of sludge and doom.In the song's final minute that creep into a more melodic section with cleaner guitar tones. One thing I like about the vocal is that they are not blatantly metal and could be put in the context of a post-punk or darker indie rock band and also work. "Skin Crawler" finds the band slugging it out in a more conventional doom setting. Midway they get into the eerie darkness of Acid Bath's more melodic moments.This ghostly road is further traveled on "Find the Stranger". However their unique vocals do not save the more run of the mill "You Must Sin". They begin to get mired into more typical doom on song's like "Burn Offering" and "Mask of Satan", though they prove themselves more capable of this on "It". They stay in a more straight ahead metal mode as the album rumbles into "Astral Corpse" where the vocals take on an almost punk cadence in the chorus.The title track is just more traditional heavy handed doom, complete with all the Sabbath worship that comes with that. The Ozzyism comes in on the final song. The chorus steps out from behind this enough to make it interesting. It's still up for debate as to if this will make it over to the ole iPod, but I will round it up to a 9, because I like the singing. The bands strengths lie in when they are not playing by the doom rule book and dipping into this darker sound.Still fans of more traditional forms of doom will find lots to love about this album that is being released by Rise Above Records on March 25h.

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