Smoking

This EP troubles me deeply; how do you say their name? Does one say Dotdot in some sort of cruel and sad imitation of a pokemon or do we ignore the (.) and assume that it's simply dot in a similar fashion to SunnO)))? Also since Japanese law stipulates that all bands in the region must have at least one hilarious engrish sentance as a song or album title we get 'Stay Smoke, Stay Stone' which just raises further questions. I can only assume it is a reference to that one time they all got so massively baked they were worried their pet rock was going to run away and potentially be hunted down by some sort of Cruella de Vil clone who wants to make clothes from its lovely... coat?

But of course we're not here to debate linguistics or to hypothesise why anyone would want to create underwear that would grind your bollocks into a fine red mist, there's music on this EP and I'm here to tell you whether you should like it or not. To avoid needless reading let's just say you won't like this band, and especially this EP if you're the type of person who gets frustrated at how long it takes to cook two-minute noodles which is just a long way of saying that dot(.) play a blend of stoner, doom and drone metal.

"Smoking Green" is the drone-iest track, sounding like something SunnO))) would have cooked up around the ØØ Void-era if they were on amphetamines and threw in a drummer and vocalist for a laugh. The first third or so of the song is actually mid-paced before the song rides out the next ten or so minutes on one riff; it isn't great but it is quite compelling in a repetitive way.

"I'm a Monkey" is definitely the stoner/doom side coming to the forefront of the band with some big riffs that bring to mind Electric Wizard but with Eyehategod style vocals which is a bit too apt a summary since little more could be added. The riffs are solid but could probably do with a bit more variation due to having a discernible momentum and not being a drone riff.

When all is said and done this isn't a bad EP, but considering I could only explain the music by comparing it to other bands paints a poor picture. This isn't to say the music itself bad however; it's functional if only because it's cobbled together from the attributes of other bands. This EP certainly isn't a must but is worth a look if you're desperately in need of even more of this type of music.