ninehertz

We’ve all been listening to this band for so long now, they’re part of the lexicon of our music – they have cultivated this sound to the extent ‘Slomatics’ is practically its own genre descriptor: the huge lurching doom guitars, the focus on perfecting the tone – long since achieved. The amplified power they can achieve as their riffs descend the depths, often set within a sci-fi noir universe – this is and always has been Slomatics – and it can be easy to take them for granted.

They are such a beloved band because of all of this, but their on-going appeal resides in their restlessness to try and escape the typecast (which I’m guilty of). Over recent albums they have become more dynamic, adding to their immovable foundations to appear anew and it reaps dividends here.

There’s melody within Atomicult. You can hear it as early as second track Phantom Castle Warning, even within its repeating booming doom. This has been true of them for a while now – certainly on their last Strontium Fields – yet it still feels new and novel to witness the snail pace of evolution taking a spike leap forward.

The fossils – the evidence – are littered liberally across this new album. There are synths aplenty, violins backing acoustic tracks – outright ‘singing’ which has me imagining Slomatics as I used to know them singing a lullaby to a baby. It’s an odd sensation, but only because of the known history of their multitude of releases. There is experimentalism abound.

It doesn’t always work, but as a minimum it’s intriguing for their sense of adventure. The acoustic track is followed by Night Grief, and as if to gain the greatest contrast we’re led into an old school Slomatics towering riff immediately, bounding along before falling into a glorious gallop. Yet even here there’s their recent form shining through too, synths entering once again to add to the sci-fi feel, the whole track a storybook of Slomatics timeline in four and a half excellent minutes.

At one point I realise who it reminds me of in many ways – Boss Keloid, not only a peer but presumably a protégé of Slomatics, new and different progressive doom. Atomicult is exactly that – progressive musically and in approach, ambitious with it too. It has the odd flaw showing here and there as a result, but for a band who have been around a length of time measured in decades not years, they’re easily forgiven and forgotten, leaving you to marvel at their ongoing and everlasting mastery of this artform.