Ringmaster

Yeah, our favourite ringmaster would have been enchanted to hear these goofy doomy sounds; they would have helped him fight the hordes of orks, trolls, gollums and all other shite much more easily, not to mention kicking Sauron’s fiery ass with just a single bassy reverberation… alas, the good old doom wasn’t readily available in the Middle Kingdom at that time, but no complaints if you think of it; cause if it was we wouldn’t have had three great books and six pretty decently made films.

Our “crusaders” here armed themselves for battle with the fairly good slab of vintage traditional doom that was the debut, cool competently executed music with echoes of the usual suspects (Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Saint Vitus,). Slight contaminants from the stoner/doom diversification movement instigated by Cathedral could easily be detected, but nothing genre-blending or life-threatening at this stage.

The album reviewed here arrived two years later, and it didn’t radically change the scenery. The guys’ passion for the good old Sabbath is evident everywhere, from the formidable steam-rolling march of the opening “Behemoth” to the surprisingly sprightly and lively “Killer Kane”, to the sprawling funereal dirge of “Black Waters”… yeah, nothing is missing and just when you start thinking that this effort is too stringently done by-the-doomy-book come the diversifiers, the less obvious (the officiant balladic sprawl “Cascades of Phantoms”) and the more glaring ones like the bouncy stonery title-track, the trippy “Carnival Bizarre” (Cathedral) leftover “Pigz”, and the bluesy rocky “This Time”. Doom restores quite a bit of its dignity with the inordinately serious stomper “Human Form”, but watch out for “Lazy Drag”, a “lazy draggy” acoustic ballad that will hypnotize you into a snooze, the guys trying to emulate the melancholic obliviousness of Sabbath’s “Spirit Caravan”, throwing in a rowdier noisier conclusion towards the end to wake up the spirits… sorry, sleepers.

Cool albeit somewhat uneven stuff, the band more interested in stretching the initially chosen formula than firmly falling into retro doomy oblivion, the more abrasive guitar sound also ringing the changes, but again not very drastically. The inebriate pleasantly hoarse vocals stand their ground, but it’s clear that they would be ready to swing the stoner way completely if a need arises, recalling the good old Scott "Wino" Weinrich more than just occasionally.

Well, there wasn’t much of a considerable swing on the third instalment “Dusk” which appeared whole 12 years later, the band having chosen to stand by the trad doom canons, with a few dissipations again provided, a more vigorous, more energetic offering that may as well be viewed their finest hour. From dusk till dawn they ride, these horsemen, all the way to Mount Doom and back, ready to serve the ringmaster and obliterate all evil be it in the Middle or any other kingdom.