ninehertz

Can an album be both a blast from the past and a breath of fresh air? Sydney’s Old Heathens somehow achieves both opposing cliches on Celestial Decay, through a return to the good old days of stoner rock’s height by retaining the core tenets that to some extent have been lost in the decades since.

It is on the stoner/doom border – the band describe their process of doom creation as a ritual, and the obsession with and obsequence to tone, amps and riffs certainly indicates there’s a case for it.

It's nice and steady paced, well written tunes that recall Beastwars early on, or perhaps even The Hidden Hand, vocals of that ilk and with stoner sensibilities within. Melodic passages that give more than a nod to grunge pop up, reminding me out of the blue of the lesser-known stoner band Biblical Proof of UFOs.

So why the breath of fresh air sensation you ask? I found this a pleasure to hear stoner rock written and played so well and confidently and it’s been a while since I had just a natural kinship to a new album of a sound I loved first so long ago. This is self-released, but could easily fit along, say, the Small Stone Records roster of an older era – a fun EP of stoner rock for the modern day.