Welcome to the Weaseldome

This band needed a damn long time to come around with their first album…and then it’s still too short! But short records are better than those drifting on for too long and getting boring, so I only hope they won’t need another 9 years for the second album. ‘Cause this debut is a really one!

What we got here is technical death metal mainly influenced by early 90s albums from Florida. So if you are into Atheist, Cynic, Nocturnus and Human-era Death, this might appeal to you. And this is also the cool thing about Johnston, cause by neither sounding like ancient death metal nor like modern blast beat shit, this even has some kind of originality to it. You might say if they are influenced by the old masters of technical death metal, how are they original. Well, they are for sure influenced by them, but they don’t really sound alike. It’s not the same mayhem as Nocturnus, and it’s for sure not as technical as Atheist and Cynic, but it got a lot of really cool ideas and even with an average song length of more than five minutes, the songs are not too hard to get into. There’s always something new to explore, but there’s also always something that sticks to the mind.

The second song “Feel My Presence” is quite a standout. After a short bass intro the guitars set in with a melody that could be played by some current stadium death metal shit band, but it’s short enough to not get cheesy and thus comes out as a nice addition. And then, later in the song, these guys really turn into playing some waltz riff. Yes, it really is a waltz, you could dance to it, but it still fits in the song and for sure sounds like extreme metal. And also the outro of the last song with the accordion and mandolin like guitars shows the creative potential that lurks in the brains of these strange guys.

Since I mentioned the old Floridian bands as an important influence, I should note that the vocals are quite different. It’s not the raspy aggressive style somewhat influenced by thrash metal, but these guys here use very deep and brutal growls, more akin to bands such as Grave and sometimes Bolt Thrower.

The production is pretty good. The whole album is self produced, and except for the drums has not been recorded in a real studio, but it still sounds much better than many albums out there with a good recording budget. The sound is neither under- nor overproduced. For sure, it’s all digital and does not have the natural warmth of an old analogue recording, but it does not sound like all these terrible recordings out there that suffer from mega compression and triggered drums. Also the mix is really good, you can hear everything in a pleasingly balanced way. The whole production smells of long working hours by the band themselves and is proof of litres of heart’s blood that have flown into this.

The only letdown are the artwork and the strange humour which will be a bit too odd for many death metal fans. But it should be noted that even though it is very obvious that these guys don’t take themselves seriously, this for sure is not a fun record. So rest assured, even though it does not have the dark and deathy atmosphere of the true ancient style, this is no stupid bullshit either! And some of the crazy ideas are really cool actually, like when they include all the “aaarrrggghhhhs”, “grrrrrrrrrs” and “oooooooohhhhhhs” into the printed lyrics.

“Welcome to the Weaseldome” is a damn fine debut and shows a lot of potential. If Johnston manage to get going with regular gigs and continue to work hard, I am sure the next album will be a killer! If you are into extreme metal as being described above, do yourselves a favour and check this band out. They really deserve it!