Slowly We Rock

Use your allusion...Slowly We Rock. How many times will I erroneously type that title before this review is finished?

So what does a German stoner metal band have in common with Obituary besides a clever title reference? Nada. Not a single cause of death anywhere to be found. If anything, Spancer's second album is a celebration of some sort of life, lifting samples from Hero and riffs from, well, I'm not really sure. A little YOB might be lurking in there somewhere, but this is too grounded, too earthy, too dirty. And the 'lectric Wizard, well they played slow, but this slow? "Throne of Wisdom" is a double bass nightmare of growling, creeping doooom and soaring, thundering stoner rock. Toner Low: that's the band that comes to mind, but they are just about Spancer's equals in obscurity.

Three tracks. Ten minute minimum. Takes at least that long to start and finish a good stoner jam, right? Opener "The Art of True Mastership" takes a Nantucket Sleighride, wending its way through heavier and heavier moments to end in relative peace, sorta back where it began, all fuzz and swirling guitars. And a guqin. Yeahp. You read that right. Bong has their sitar and Spancer has their guqin. Doom has always been more than slow riffs and down-tuned guitars and a drummer that sits back in the beat: it's gotta have some foreboding, some evil atmosphere (what would "Black Sabbath" be without the rain and thunder?). If it don't, it don't work. This works. There's tension and release. By the song's end, I'm spent. Aurally bludgeoned even.

Slowly We Rock? Well sure, it actually does rock, even at its slowest. It swings, too. It's sonically dense: cue Phil Spector and Wall of Sound reference. What more does a stoner doom fan need? Or want? I find this entire album infinitely listenable and more than that, it's memorable. Memorable? As much as anything is anymore anyway. So does that make this record better than the ten or fifteen dozen other stoner doom albums released that year and each year since? Yes. Because I'm still listening to this one almost five years later and I have an ever-growing pile of future coasters that get listened once and never played again.

(Oh, and when I said double bass, I meant two herren mit vier stringers ala Cop Shoot Cop).