You should really be warned from the start that the new album by Restless Spirit “Blood of the Old Gods” is a beast. The trio from New York has created an album that easily looks eye to eye with bands like Mastodon, High on Fire and Psychonaut. There are brilliant vocal melodies throughout, with intelligent riffs and grooves that demonstrate the band’s musicianship.
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Named after the fruit Pitaya with it’s scale-like skin, “Dragonfruit” is the new album by Plastic Woods from Andalucia, Spain. Following their debut “Icarus” album of 2019, “Dragonfruit” is a rich palette of progressive stoner rock sounds that hops across decades and genres with remarkable dexterity, demonstrating the band’s musicianship and crafting a unique sound.
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Following their brilliant self-titled album that came out only in April 2021, Birmani is back again to close the year with the 4th instalment in a series of killer EPs that started back in 2018. “EP4” consists of four songs recorded by the band itself at home towards the end of summer 2021. But this is something that you would have never guessed, as the overall production is excellent. The EP kicks in with the big riff of “Encore” and vocals that bring to mind early Alice in Chains (Facelift era). Midway however, the song takes an intelligent Mastodonesque turn, and if you thought that the opening riff sounded big, the closing riff is massive.
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Less than a year after their acclaimed self-titled debut album, the Italian doomsters Black Spell return with “The Purple Skull”. The album picks up where their previous one left off, however, this time the production takes the band’s sound to new levels of fuzziness and doom. Truth be told, the band does not reinvent this sound, nor does it sound in any way they are interested in doing so. Their doom is honest, they serve a particular sound, and they are carving their own space in the genre next to bands like The Noise Figures, Temple of the Fuzz Witch and Acid Mammoth.
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Sweden’s Altareth released their debut album earlier this month, and what a debut album it is! The self-titled song draws you into a vortex of heaviness, bringing to mind the thunderous sound of Acid Mammoth. There are some glorious moments in songs like “Satan Hole and “Eternal Sleep”, where the band unapologetically wears its Sabbathesque roots on its sleeve. It is, however, in tunes like “Moon” and “High Priest” where the band truly starts to own the genre and find its own unique voice. Excellent work by the rhythm section, with a steady and menacing confidence, driving the tunes as it keeps pummeling all the way from the first note to the very last.
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Desert Vulture 