Black Night

Maryland's Iron Man is a band that never really got any credit in the doom scene due to their bad luck more than their actual material. They always had an inconsistent line-up, going through 3 bassists, 7 drummers, and 5 vocalists, with Al Morris III being the sole constant member, sort of like Tony Iommi being the sole constant member of Black Sabbath. On top of that, the band suffered through countless canceled gigs and imploding tours. Not only that (like the previous reviewer mentioned), at the time this album was released, doom was taken to a new direction with bands like Kyuss and Sleep, who released Holy Mountain the same year and spearheaded the stoner metal genre.

Iron Man didn’t have something new to bring to the doom table like Kyuss and Sleep did at the time, but what they do have here is a good, old fashioned, traditional, no-bullshit type of doom album. Al Morris III is a very talented guitarist, playing classic Pentagram-esque riffs infused with Iommi-style solos. Even the bassist brings Geezer Butler to mind with his sluggish bass lines and the drumming is riddled with a lot of skillful drum rolls and ride shredding. The vocals though are the weakest part of the album. The vocalist, Rob Levey, just feels very forced at times; the rhythm of his vocals doesn’t really match the rhythm of the music, and on top of that the sound of his voice feels lacking and overall mediocre.

The first three tracks are enjoyable in their own right, but to me they’re the weaker songs. The better songs start after “Black Night”, more noticeably “Leaving Town”, the longest song of the album that you could say is Iron Man’s equivalent to Black Sabbath’s War Pigs and has a more upbeat feel to it with a jam part and Al Morris’s solos, “Life’s Toll” with its heavy riffs and double bass drumming only to be followed by a slower, softer part, and my favourite track of the album, the outro ”Time for Change”, composed of heavy, doomy riffs and bass lines with bluesy Iommi solos, and even Levey is more bearable here than the other songs on the album. Undoubtedly the best song.

Iron Man is a very talented band that should be influential doom legends, but instead they got stuck in the underground. This debut is definitely not their best material, but if you manage to find this record give, it a listen. It would please any fan of traditional doom metal.