Corridors

This is pretty cool, and a somewhat unexpected find; the distro I got it from seems to prefer dark death metal, so I figured this'd be some wacky psyche death/doom or something, when really it's based almost entirely on Sabbath and various 70's rock.

Yeah, there's a lot of organ, a lot of cruisy synth times, and while there's a few fairly heavy sections, most of the material comes across as a slightly lighter/jauntier sabbath circa Master of Reality with fairly playful vocals (The Cave would be a good example). Chilled and groovy. It's not really my favourite sort of doom, I gotta admit; I like a bit more distortion, a bit more heaviness, but it's still a fun listen, and the riffs are of a pretty good quality. A lot of it's got this strange sort of amiably unhinged vibe, it's a record made by happy stoners for a similar audience.

Happy Sabbath loving metal isn't a bad thing by any means but wouldn't really be something I'd play often, so it's lucky that the final song, the epic "Another Hell Within (Space Suite Version)" is freaking awesome, basically where all the best riffs are located, where things get heaviest, strangest, wackiest. Most of the riffs in the first, most songy bit seem to be based on this one real bangin' riff, just pure brilliant Sabbath worship, and it sounds really freakin cool. The rest is just this one real long psyche jam, basically, the flute's brought out, big riffs and solos here and there, sounds a bit aimless at times but I'd prefer it over the more easy-going material that's the first five songs.

I dunno, I rather like this album and I find myself playing it a lot more then I originally expected, but it could've been better. The final song with it's long jamming and increased heaviness was really great, but the rest just didn't quite match up. It's pretty clear that these guys love their weed and love their jams, so why not take all of the songs a bit further? Why not bring out some more organ, or more solos, or (most importantly) more riffs in those tunes? I'm not suggesting that the next album be 3 songs that are 15 minutes long, but.. well, maybe I am. There's plenty of bands doing short and catchy 70's stoner metal. You're better then this, Midryasi! Get weirder!

Yeah, at the end of the day this is pretty good but I reckon it could be a lot better. Worth checking out if you like your doom, and if you're a really big fan of trad stuff (unlike me) you'll probably end up really digging this.