Rating: NNN
Drone doom heavies Earth have inopportunely released a new record of ambling, circuitous feedback riffs while metal fans are still lost in the depths of Pallbearer’s Foundations Of Burden. How are we supposed to make room for From The Zodiacal Light when we still have those other tunes stuck in our heads?
But the band can hardly be blamed for poor timing. Riffs are riffs, and there are plenty of riffs to go around, and around, and around. Primitive And Deadly has fuzz lord Dylan Carlson delving back into the coiled, halfway-abstracted guitar purring that’s made Earth synonymous with the drone doom micro-genre.
With twanging riffs echoing across the entire record, Earth continue the western-influenced sonic sculpting that began with 2007’s Morricone-inspired The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull. On tracks like There Is A Serpent Coming, the lyrics slide into boring, bad Jim Morrison pseudo-mysticism. But it’s satisfying enough to nod off to, even if it confirms suspicions that the band peaked at Pentastar.
Top track: Even Hell Has Its Heroes
