Over ten years ago now I was examining my local record shop with my customary vigour and I came across a little-known EP by a band called Slo Burn. The band turned out to be the elephantine project with which John Garcia followed Kyuss and the resulting EP (‘amusing the amazing’ if you fancy trying to track it down) was a mix of blues, stoner rock and blistering desert sun. It is apt, then, that this EP by this Gothenburg five-piece, which owes more than a casual debt to Garcia’s ground-breaking act Kyuss, is on the Slow Burn label (see, I got to the point in the end!) and that the spirit of Kyuss, albeit infused with the avant-garde sensibilities of Neurosis and the sludgy doom of Down, flies high (literally) on the five excellent tracks included here.
Sitting comfortably in the rarely-trodden landscapes of stoner, doom, psychedelic and pure heavy metal genres, the Deadists, I am pleased to report, are another of those wonderful bands who gleefully defy easy labelling, preferring to take those influences that seem appropriate to any given track and twist them to their own evil purposes. Take the crashing drums, ground out riffs and tortured vocals of first track ‘woven’ which could be loosely compared to the Melvins covering Black Sabbath in a cement mixer and you’ll quickly see the heavily-fuzzed ground that the Deadists enjoy. Dark, heavy and pulsing with a furious energy the riffs are heavy enough to level mountains while the drums sound like Markus Bolechowski Franklin has been injected with Animal’s DNA to make him perform with maximum vigour. Second track, ‘human stain’ certainly emphasises that Kyuss edge sounding comfortably like it could belong on ‘…and the circus leaves town’ although with a more metallic edge than the stoned synapses of Homme and Garcia could muster. Taking a break from smashing your skull into the floor, the band introduce a more subtle set of dynamics on the dark, malevolent ‘infinite self’ which offers up a vicious Neurosis streak offset by blackened doom tendencies all of which makes the 6 minute run time flash by in what feels like a minute. Of course, music as dense as this requires that a certain amount of attention be paid to it and several replays are well rewarded as you start to appreciate the subtle touches and nuances the band utilise in their music whether it be a slightly more developed drum riff or the phasing of vocals from left to right channel and the multiple riff and tempo changes also require several listens to fully appreciate how much is going on in the band’s music.
Hopefully, by now you will have realised that we rather like the Deadists here at SonicAbuse – certainly this is a record that doom fans, stoner fans and even the more open minded progressive metal fans can get behind and will treasure for months to come as the fourth track ‘deeper within’ comfortably demonstrated. Certainly there’s far more to this band than simple brute force and while there are a plethora of crushing riffs that will see even hardened doom fans flattened, it is the subtle shifts in dynamics and the building of tension, particularly on this track, that make this such a special effort. Joacim Axelsson-Sternkrans deserves special mention here also because his voice towers over the complicated music, never lost amidst the chaos and innovation and he also sings in quite a unique way; somewhere between Scott Kelly and Ian Mackaye with a corrosive bark that is always just on the right side of tuneful. Final track ‘chase the giving properties’ follows on nicely from the swirling blackness of its forebear with a sound not unlike Helmet’s stop-start riffing and post-hardcore bark and it draws this all-too-short EP to a suitably satisfying close. A bonus track, in the form of ‘Blizzard of nails’, merely forms the icing on a particularly succulent cake.
As you might expect, such a short EP leaves you with only one wish: to hear more. The band’s music is dark, intelligent and filled with plenty of satisfying twists and turns, all of which would suit the long-player format perfectly. The production, courtesy of Sven Jensen, is excellent – crisp and dry bringing out the band’s strengths without unnecessarily embellishing the sound and detracting from the live feel of the music. Indeed, raw and vital are two adjectives which ideally suit The Deadists, whose surging, vaguely seventies-inspired rock would benefit absolutely from a vinyl pressing. With impressive artwork and such a compelling sound, this is nigh on irresistible – a worthy and exciting purchase for any metal fan then.
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