IBLISS : "Bintang Fajar"

The second album from this Malaysian stoner doom act finds them attacking your ears with a similar fuzzed out feed back ridden sonic disdain. They jam out the instrumental opening track which could have been banged out by any number of bands. The title track is more melodic and seems to care about the finer points of song writing little more. I can only guess the vocals are being sung in their native tongue as they sit back in the wall of guitars and are hard to distinguish, though not very articulated. They do sing in English on the blues based "Sold Your Soul to the Devil". I think this more laid back approach is a smart move as it contrasts the sludged out rumble that perhaps owed a little too much to Electric Wizard earlier in the album.

"Flower Ov Evil" has a commanding pound, that casts enough creep over the proceedings to appeal to fans of doom. While it's a cool enough riff it drones on it for the duration of the song that does not offer enough dynamics for this to be an instrumental. Sure the guitar solos are great and all but still not enough to justify it being a song. Things get darker and heavier for "Living Like a Sinner" but is that going to be enough to make the song worthwhile?  The riff is broken up more like Black Sabbath, but the vocals take a more staccato punk like pattern. The chorus works pretty well for what they are doing. 

They close the album out with "Killing Spree" . This is another instrumental which does not show a great deal of purpose despite  the fact they do manage for the riffs to change up in a pretty jammy organic fashion for the first half of the song, and a great deal of song time is decorated with wandering f guitar solos, but not really enough melody, to justify the time this song is consuming. there is a few minutes of silence before they come back with what amounts to be a hidden track that is just lingering not from a bass. I will give this album a 7.5, not bad for what they are doing I think the strength of working of bluesy songs on "Sold Your Soul to the Devil" is a side they need to blend more into the other songs. Out September 8th on Regain Records.