ninehertz

With a name like Hash Bong, this can only realistically be within the range of one genre neighbourhood. How that is approached can vary however, at one end a title like this is indicative of some lame jokey sludge, while at the other simply displays a true commitment to the doom cause. This, thankfully, is well within the latter.

Hash Bong are from Colorado, an instrumental two-piece of bass and drums. There’s a lit to like within this self-titled album. It is defined by its bass sound, the instrument acting as centrepiece in the absence of vocals, becoming a gnashing, rabid dog prowling its yard. There’s a clear Sabbath influence running album long, which is of course mandatory for this music but on the cleverly titled Battle Hogs it manifests more directly than usual in a grimy War Pigs reworking.

The songs are short, the band seemingly content to find an idea or a riff and then play with it, quickly close up, and move on happily. The album flies by as a result and never gets bogged down. That being said, my contrarianism can’t help to note that my favourite track is the longest, Dome and Nail on a different plain with its loveable groove in the riff and evolution as it drops down into the surface level mists as it slows and wallows in its own tone.

What they achieve so well, against the odds set by its instrumental and two-piece limitations is in keeping your interest through subtle variance, whether it’s the touches of Sleep alongside the Sabbath, or the hypnotic Om vibes of the opening Smokin’ Weed. As the song title suggests this record is on-topic and to the point (blunt, you might say), but it has more to it than you might expect.