ninehertz

This is Druid Stone’s seventh album, the Virginian “trans doom metal” innovator a constant source of creation, particularly when you think of all the split and short releases to their name as well. It’s been too long since we at ninehertz checked in, and The Living Dead is a great place to return and make amends.

There’s no single reference point you can pin them down to, in genre or their peers, and this is, and always has been Druid Stone’s strongest facet. It fills the album with life and curious intrigue. There is the scuzzy, fuzzy occult doom obsession as its base line, but always with a spring in its step so as not to be too po-faced and serious. In these moments, they play with bluesy guitars, dip in and out of stoner or garage rock, dive headfirst into a turbulent atmosphere of dense psychedelia.

It’s like being consumed by staring into a lava lamp of doom. The guitar work flourishes, occasionally wandering off, even into wild solos in amongst the walls of fuzz that surround it. There are passages which don’t quite work, but this is the pay off for the mildly experimental and free approach and it’ll quickly be somewhere anew regardless, and the sense of freedom transmits outwardly to you as the listener.

I couldn’t stop smiling while listening and this is the overriding feeling I have to the album looking back. Listening through with my reviewer’s hat on, I have my ears looking for the genre shifts, the changes in tempo, the balance of light and dark, but repeat plays through, where I listen freely and on feel alone are much more rewarding. The Living Dead dances across genres with abandon, a happy, honest and excellent doom record.